


Best Left Forgotten

by FalseRoar



Series: Can You Wake Up? [5]
Category: Markiplier-fandom, Who Killed Markiplier? (Web Series)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Badgers, Drama, Gen, Mark Fischbach Egos, Memory Loss, Non-Graphic Violence, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Who Killed Markiplier?, Sean McLoughlin Egos, Shooting Guns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-27 12:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 42,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20046373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FalseRoar/pseuds/FalseRoar
Summary: In yet another bid to try and get Y/N to remember their time as the District Attorney, Dark accidentally opens the door for Wilford to start remembering pieces of his past--putting him in a state of of mind that the others have seen before and never hoped to see again. While Y/N tries to get to the bottom of their own memory issues with the help of the Septic egos, Mark and Dark try to track down Wilford and deal with the unrest growing among the other egos.Again, this was written before Wilford Motherloving Warfastache and was originally posted on Tumblr. The Mark here is the "Actor Mark" character from Who Killed Markipler. While the violence is not graphic, there are references to shootings and blood in some chapters.





	1. Mementoes

Weeks had passed since the “mask incident”, as no one called it, and you had fallen into a routine, almost. Routine, in that you became used to spending time at the house with the Iplier egos and with this version of Mark that you were slowly getting to know for real. Not so much routine in that you had no idea what to expect whenever you left your room in either house each morning. Or even before that, considering Wilford had more than once burst into your room at some ungodly hour with some idea for his show or something fun to do or just because he was bored or, one time, with a live badger.

Oh God, the badger. Not knowing where that thing went still made it hard to sleep at night, not helped by the sounds coming from beneath your bed.

But that was part of the fun, wasn’t it? Spending time with these crazy egos, running lines with Bim Trimmer for his show, watching Bing show off his latest trick, carrying Bing to Dr. Iplier after his latest trick, helping the King of the Squirrels steal peanut butter from the kitchen when Chef Iplier wasn’t looking, and then there was the time you spent with Mark and his friends which, honestly, wasn’t that much more normal.

There were a few things that still bothered you though, even now that the house, that house from Who Killed Markiplier, was burned and gone.

Like your memories, and your lack of them. You had your memories from what you still thought of as your reality, the one where Mark was just Mark and all of these people you spent time with day in and day out were just characters. But your memories as the District Attorney were a different story.

Not that Mark and Darkiplier didn’t stop trying to get you to remember, even now. One day after you had recovered and moved into your room at the Iplier house, you were wandering the halls when you ran into Dark and one of the Googles, the one in the blue shirt. Too late you realized that you were near Dark’s office, a place you had only been in once before, and that was one time too many.

“Wait, Y/N,” Dark said, trying to make his voice sound soft and even. “Please, I have something that I think you may want to see.”

You doubted that, but when Dark opened the office door and gestured at his desk, you couldn’t help but look and see the mess of papers and photos that covered his desk. By then you were already halfway across the room. It barely took a glance to recognize them as the Detective’s notes and papers he had kept in his office at Markiplier’s old house, the ones you recovered before the place was burnt to the ground and left with Abe.

“How did you get these?” you asked suspiciously, and Dark raised his hands as if warding off the accusation.

“Now, look again. Most of those are copies, of course. The originals went with their owners where possible, as we all agreed.”

He was right, now that you looked closer. Aside from some of the photos, most of them were copies, albeit really good ones. This was everything from the study, the only traces that remained of everyone who had been there that weekend, aside from the people themselves.

Dark was at your side without you noticing, and you immediately took a long step to the side as he said, “I just thought you might like to look at them again, Y/N, see if they stir up any memories. That is all.”

“Why?” you asked.

“Can’t I just want to do something for an old friend?” Dark asked, and seeing your expression quickly followed up with, “And of course, that is why I have Google here as well. Okay, Google.”

Google’s expression became more attentive as a tone came from his chest, although he didn’t do much to hide the aggravation of being used on command.

Dark smiled in return, clearly enjoying Google’s discomfort as he said, “I want you to observe Y/N, and if at any time they feel uncomfortable in my presence then you are to escort them out of my office. Is that understood?”

“Understood,” Google said with an answering ping. He walked forward and placed a hand on your arm, gently but firmly leading you to the door. “I am to escort you out, Y/N.”

“Google, stop!” Dark stepped in front of the android and glared at him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Google tilted his head with a smirk. “Upon observation, this unit believes any time in Darkiplier’s presence is enough to make them feel uncomfortable.”

“I swear, if I have to get Bing to do this, I will rip out your CPU and shove it—” Dark seemed to realize that you could hear every word of this and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Y/N…”

It was your turn to sigh. “Dark, I looked at all of these before, remember? It didn’t help then.”

Dark studied you for a moment and then walked over to his desk to sit in the chair behind it. You saw his head dip down for a moment and the distinct click of a locked drawer opening before he pulled out a single item and placed it on top of the papers.

You approached the desk, staring down at the black cane with the silver top. This close, you could see the hairline crack that ran the length of the cane, but there was no denying what it was.

“You kept this?” you asked, your voice shaking slightly.

Dark nodded, not looking away from your face. “Please, Y/N, just try one more time to remember.”

You reached out, hesitated, and picked up one of the photos instead. It was a copy. The original had gone to Mark, and he had it framed and put in the guest room where you stayed while at his house. He never said anything about it, but you knew he hoped just as much as Dark that the image of Mark, Damien, and the District Attorney (were they even the District Attorney then?) standing together smiling backstage at one of Mark’s shows might stir up some memory.

But your memories as the District Attorney started and stopped at the house. You remembered the poker night and the terrible days that followed, or as much as the alcohol and the videos your Mark made allowed you to, and as for the decades that followed, trapped in that mirror and within the walls of that house, well, you remembered _too_ much of that. You hadn’t told anyone about the nightmares of being back in that place, the doors that wouldn’t open or the emptiness behind the mirror.

It was to the point that as you turned over papers and saw your name or your own face in places you didn’t recognize, you still thought of that version of you as just the District Attorney, as someone else. You picked up one photo and realized that it was an original by its weight, the Colonel in his uniform staring back up at you, and put it down next to one of Mark, Damien, and William all together, smiling.

When Dark seemed to realize that this wasn’t working, you expected him to be angry, for his shell to break or something, but he sounded curious more than anything as he asked a question that you didn’t expect:

“Tell me, the Markiplier that you remember, what is he like?”

“Mark? Well, I didn’t really know him outside of his videos,” you admitted. You didn’t want to go into how much your Mark (the one you still thought of as the real Mark) meant to you, not to Dark, but you still found yourself saying, “But he seemed like a good guy, always doing stuff for charity, smart but kind of stupid sometimes, _really_ bad at try not to laugh challenges. Also, he does seem seriously weird stuff. He’s funny and can kind of be rude and stubborn to the point you want to yell at him, but also serious when he needs to be. I don’t know, he’s just Mark.”

“You said before that there, in those memories, all of this was just a story, not real, correct?” Dark said, gesturing at the papers covering his desk. “And the egos?”

“Characters he created,” you said, aware that Google could hear every word. You could only imagine what he thought when you added, “They weren’t real, at least in that version of reality.”

“Wilford and I…”

“Wilford Warfstache was actually the first character he played on his channel,” you said, unable to suppress a smile when you remembered that Mark had called Wilford his favorite. “And Mark always said that it was the fans who created Darkiplier, not him.”

You wondered if you should have said that, but Dark smirked to himself at the thought. “So even in that reality, you had a hand in my creation.”

“…Yeah, I’m leaving now.”

He made no move to stop you, but he did, once you were out the door, look at Google and say, “Okay, Google, erase all memory of my conversation with Y/N just now and then we’ll have a little _talk_ about your attitude.”

It was the one and only time Dark tried to get you to remember something about the District Attorney. You avoided him as much as you could after that, but you began to suspect that he had lost interest. After all, you showed no sign of remembering anything, and you hadn’t had one of those “visions”, those memories of the past or future that happened whenever you came into contact with him, Mark, or Wilford since the house burned down, not that you missed those.

Still, you slowed down one morning when you saw the door to Dark’s office standing open. This was your day to head back over to Mark’s place, and you didn’t want him trying to stop you, or worse, following you downstairs so he could start up an argument with Mark. Last time that happened it went on for so long that you and several of the egos were two steps away from stealing Mark’s car and going for a joyride to escape the noise.

But when you walked by, you heard a sound that made you stop and look in.

Once again, the papers and photographs littered the top of the desk, and Damien’s cane lay in full sight. But the figure who stood with his back to the door with shaking shoulders was not Dark.

You walked into the office, feeling as though the floor was tilting out beneath your feet with each step, and it took an effort to speak.

“Wilford?”

Wilford spun around to face you, tears freely streaming down his cheeks and one hand already reaching for the gun that was always at his side.


	2. The Colonel Returns

“…You’re…you’re the District Attorney, Damien’s friend,” Wilford said slowly as he focused on you through the tears. His voice quivered and it sounded strange to your ears, but then it was hard to hear anything over the roaring pounding through your head as you stared down the barrel of the gun pointed your way. He followed your gaze and reacted with horror, lowering the weapon and stepping toward you as he said, “No, no, I didn’t mean, Y/N, I–…”

He trailed off, staring at you with an expression that was almost as terrifying as the gun he still held with one finger on the trigger.

“Wil—” you started but he cut you off.

“No, no, I told you to call me the Colonel, didn’t I?” His smile trembled.

You looked from him to the papers on the desk, to the photo that lay on top of them all: Mark, Damien, Celine, and the Colonel, all together although the moment looked far from happy.

“Wil—Colonel, do you…remember what happened?” you asked slowly. “What are you doing in here?”

“Well, I was just looking for…for…” He trailed off yet again, his eyes creasing with effort like it was difficult to follow a single thought long enough to finish a sentence. “No, no, they’re gone, aren’t they? The Detective said—he said—How are you alive?”

“What?” you asked, but you could already feel this spinning out of control. They, he said, and you knew exactly who he meant.

“I watched you die, it, it, it was an accident, but I—you _died_, how are you still here?” Wilford raised his gun again, and this time you saw it shake as it pointed at you. You forced yourself to look past it, to look at Wilford and try to calm him down, but the voice caught in your throat when you saw his eyes. Until now you thought they were red from crying, which they were, but the irises had changed from brown to a fluorescent, bubblegum pink. And they were wide with fear as he stared back at you. “What are you?! You should be dead!”

Downstairs, Mark paced back and forth in the hall, just inside the front door. He was already wishing that he had waited in the car even though your text said you were on your way down. It wouldn’t be so bad waiting if _he _hadn’t been there when the Host opened the door for Mark.

Dark’s aura was slowly filling the area as he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, eyes watching Mark’s every movement. Neither had said anything, and it would have been silent if not for the Host’s narration as he sat patiently in a plush chair, one that Mark didn’t recognize. Then again, it seemed the furniture and layout of this place changed every time he came by, which had been easy enough to ignore before when his visits weren’t so regular.

When Mark turned in his pacing and found that Dark’s aura had grown to block his path away from the door, he scowled and finally broke the silence. “Don’t you have something better to do?”

Dark smiled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“This is so stupid and petty! Y/N agreed to doing it this way, it’s not like I’m kidnapping them every other week! So why do you have to do this every single time?”

Dark shrugged. “Maybe I am just that petty. Or maybe I just want to make sure Y/N hasn’t changed their mind. They are taking their time today, aren’t they?”

Mark checked the time on his phone and looked at the Host.

Without waiting for the question that he had already seen coming, the Host said, “Y/N was on their way down, but stopped in Dark’s office.”

“What?” Mark and Dark said in unison.

“Y/N is speaking to W-Wilford,” the Host said, but they both heard the hesitation in his voice and saw the way his forehead creased. They knew that the Host had difficulty “seeing” when it came to both you and Wilford, but there was something else there. The Host rarely stumbled over his narration, but he sounded almost confused as he said, “There’s something about papers, photographs…”

“No, I locked—” Dark started but stopped when he remembered this was Wilford they were talking about.

He realized what this meant just as the Host spoke again, unable to keep the panic out of his voice. _“Wilford remembers.”_

Mark swore and charged for the stairs, but Dark grabbed his arm and pulled him back with a growl. They didn’t have time for that. As both disappeared into Dark’s aura, the Host spoke faster and more urgently, his narration speeding ahead as he tried to get ahead of what came next, to try and change the outcome.

“Markiplier and Dark appear in the office, startling W-Wilford. The attempts by all three to calm him down fail as he becomes increasingly erratic, until he raises his gun and—”

Here the Host stopped, his mouth in a grimace as he tried to hold onto the words that followed and shape them into something, anything else.

Upstairs, Wilford jumped and turned, keeping both hands on his gun as he stared at the two men who suddenly appeared in the office. You heard the pained whimper in his voice as the words started and failed to come and all he could do was stare at the two of them.

“Wilford,” Dark said, putting all of his energy into the words as he tried to speak slowly and calmly. “Lower your gun, Wilford. It’s just us.”

The gun dipped down toward the floor, but his grip on it did not relax as he stared at them with those pink, furrowed eyes.

“That’s it, everything’s okay, right?” Mark said, lowering his hands. “Wilford, you’re—”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” Wilford asked, his voice shaking, and Mark stopped. “It’s the Colonel, but only my friends can call me that. It’s William to _you_.”

“What? But we are friends, right?” Mark said, trying too hard to sound cheerful even as Dark hissed lightly beside him.

“You tried to shoot me!” The Colonel roared back at him. “You took Celine, you—You died, I saw you die, I _killed_ you!”

Mark swallowed, clearly not expecting him to remember the “game” he had set up that night at the mansion.

“Colonel, please,” you said as he raised his gun once again and pointed it straight at Mark’s heart. “Don’t do this.”

His eyes flickered toward you, but he was still glaring at Mark behind the trembling gun.

“Mark is your friend,” you said, trying to move a little closer. “I know you don’t remember, or it’s all really confusing right now, but it was that house, there was something bad in it that got into everyone’s head—”

You stopped moving when the Colonel turned on you, but the tears were back in his eyes again.

“What are you?” he asked again, looking at the three of you. “Homo zombificus? Ghosts to haunt me? I shot you Mark, and Y/N, it was an accident, but—And Celine, they said…they said…”

His voice cracked while your heart hammered in your ears. _Celine?_

You glanced at Dark, but for a moment you saw him as someone else, as the Seer, but still clearly Dark with an aura that was close to breaking in half as she stared at the man in front of her, hair still semi-covering one of her darkened and widened eyes. Then you blinked and he was Dark still, his eyes narrowing as if searching for a way to snap Wilford out of this.

“Wilford,” Dark said, putting as much emphasis into the name as he could. “Look at me. I am not Celine, and we are not ghosts or figments of your imagination or whatever else you think we are. We’re real.”

“Not…Celine, no, of course you’re not,” the Colonel said, and Dark recoiled as the man began to laugh. It was a desperate, gut-wrenching kind of laugh that hurt to even listen to. “No, of course not! Celine isn’t dead, she and Damien are just hiding somewhere, right?”

“I…” Dark faltered and looked to Mark, who seemed just as lost.

“You know!” The Colonel said suddenly, and once again his gun was up and pointed at you. He was no longer laughing and his voice was low and serious as he asked, “You went with them, you saw them last, didn’t you? Where are Damien and Celine?”

“They’re…They’re not here, Colonel,” you said, glancing at Dark who shook his head. But Wilford needed to know. “They’re gone.”

“Gone?” You watched his eyes as he heard the familiar word and immediately rejected it. “No, they can’t be gone! Where are they? _Tell me!”_

Mark and Dark moved at the same time, Mark lunging toward the Colonel while Dark reached for you. Neither made it in time before the Colonel’s hand moved out of a well-worn reflex and the shot fired out.

You saw the gun jerk at the last possible second. You felt Dark’s hand on your arm at the same time something cracked to your left. There was a rush of noise crashing into your ears to the point of pain.

And then nothing.

You opened your eyes, not that it made much of a difference in the darkness. You turned in a full circle, but there was nothing to see, not even the other side of a mirror in this void that felt far too familiar and different from the one you had known before. Here, there was the overwhelming presence that weighed down on you to the point of being suffocating, the sense of being closed in instead of lost and not quite alone in a cold emptiness, and the distant noises pierced by a constant ringing that you recognized even if you wished you couldn’t.

You were in Dark’s dimension.


	3. Happened Before

“No, no, nononono,” the Colonel moaned, staring at where you were just a second ago. “I didn’t mean it, it was an accident!”

He barely resisted as Mark grabbed his arm, forcing him to lower the gun even though he would not relinquish his iron grip on the weapon.

Mark glanced at Dark, who answered the unspoken question, “Y/N is safe. He missed.”

How though? The Colonel never missed, even when he wasn’t trying. They both reached the same answer at the same time, though neither said it:_ the Host_.

“Where are they?” the Colonel asked, in between sobs. “Where’s Y/N? Where’s Celine, where’s Damien?”

“That’s enough. I’m going to send you somewhere you can calm down,” Dark said gently as he put a hand on the Colonel’s shoulder.

The second Dark’s aura tried to spread to envelop him the man’s eyes flared pink and he lashed out with a shout. Dark hit the wall and crumpled to the floor while Mark came dangerously close to hitting his head on the corner of the fireplace.

“I have to…I have to find them,” he muttered, one hand holding the gun and the other to his chest from the pain of using so much energy even as he summoned more.

By the time either of them could get up, Wilford was gone in a swirl of pink and yellow.

“That could have gone better,” Dark said as he checked his ribs. It didn’t feel like any were broken, not that it would have mattered much.

Mark was already on his feet, although he staggered on his way to Dark. “Bring them back, _now._”

Dark scowled at what sounded suspiciously like an order, but his aura spread and broke to release you back into the room. Almost immediately you dropped to your hands and knees, gasping as if you had been holding your breath this entire time.

“Y/N! Y/N, are you okay?” Mark tried to put a hand on your shoulder but you pushed him away and slowly got to your feet.

“Just…just give me a minute,” you said, and you backed away from both of them to lean on the desk, which felt refreshingly solid and real.

“You shouldn’t have struggled,” Dark said, and you flipped him off because getting a breath together to speak was hard enough.

Even the dimly lit office felt bright and too much after that place, and for a moment you thought you were dangerously close to throwing up. Your hands were shaking, but you tried to hide it as you looked around. “Where’s Wilford? Is he okay?”

“He almost shot you!” Mark said.

You looked and saw the broken vase, its pieces scattered over the floor, and the hole in the wall behind it. If Wilford’s gun hadn’t moved at the last second…

“He’s gone,” Dark answered. “He ran after you disappeared.”

“So, he might still be in the house somewhere,” you said, and immediately imagined what might happen if Wilford ran into one of the other egos like this.

Dark reached out a hand to stop you before you got to the door and you pulled away from his grip. “No, not like that. I mean like the way I go from one place to the other.”

“He…he can do that? Since when?” You looked from Dark to Mark when neither answered and added, “His eyes, what was going on? I’ve never seen him do that before!”

“Wilford has…certain abilities,” Dark said slowly. “Ones that we’ve tried to make sure he never uses. They have a tendency to manifest in stressful situations, such as when his memory is a little clearer than it usually is.”

“Wait, but with that whole mask thing,” you started. “He didn’t use it then, and we almost died!”

“_You_ almost died,” Dark pointed out. “And yes, he was very close then.”

“More than a little close,” Mark muttered. “It’s one of the reasons it took us so long to get to you back at the house.”

“Wait, but abilities?” You stared at Dark and something clicked. “You don’t…mean like you, do you? How is that even possible?”

“Wilford practically grew up in that house, same as I did,” Mark said. “All of that time, with whatever _that_ is, it had an effect on us.”

He gestured at Dark as he said “that,” causing him to glare with a barely restrained comeback.

“I mean, look at everyone else who was only there for a weekend, like the Detective,” Mark said.

“Yeah, but you don’t—the Detective!” You pulled out your phone and went straight to your contacts.

“What are you doing?” Dark asked.

“Wilford’s running around with the Colonel’s memories and some weird power thing going on,” you said as you held the phone up to your ear and listened to the phone ring. “What if he—Abe!”

Dark growled as you turned away from him and began to speak quickly to the Detective, trying to get him to stop talking about whatever he was doing to the body he was examining and _listen_, but Mark pulled out his phone too and called Tyler.

While you tried to convince Abe that you were okay and that it was him you were worried about, Mark barely had to say a few words to Tyler before he was calling Amy as well.

It wasn’t until you finally got the Detective to promise that he would be careful and said goodbye that you finally voiced your suspicion. “Has this happened before?”

The look Mark and Dark shared was answer enough, and Mark was the one who gave in and said, “There’s been a…couple of times where Wilford has gotten out of control. Usually it’s only for a minute or two, but bad ones like this have happened before. Last time was, what, just before Valentine’s Day last year?”

“I believe that was before the other incident,” Dark said.

“…Right.” Mark’s expression was hard to read, partially because he avoided looking your way at that. “Honestly, I was surprised this didn’t happen when he walked in on you in the infirmary after you came out of the mirror. If anything would drag up those memories…”

But he did remember, or at least some part of him did, didn’t he? He had recognized you then, and there were times you were almost sure he could remember, but never like this. He was still Wilford then, but now…

You paused, backtracking. “Wait, Valentine’s Day last year? What happened then?”

Mark froze, the panic clear on his face before he tried to play it off. “Oh, just a little incident while we were working on a project for the channel. It worked out in the end though.”

Dark snorted, but even he looked a little unnerved when you said, “When you say project…Were you working on A Date with Markiplier?”

“Oh, you…had that back in your other…place,” Mark said. “We, uh, never got a chance to finish it.”

That would explain why you never saw it on this Mark’s channel. You had just written it off as one of the many little differences between your Mark and this Mark, but now you had an uneasy feeling.

“Mark, this video, it wasn’t one of the ones you had me help out on, is it?” you asked. You still couldn’t remember your time in the piece of mirror Mark took from the house, much less those rare moments when you were apparently strong enough to leave the mirror.

“Okay, before you say anything—”

You groaned and Dark smiled as Mark talked louder and faster in an attempt to explain.

“You agreed to it, and it wasn’t like a real date, I just needed someone to hold the camera and play the part—”

“And you couldn’t get Amy to do it?!”

“…She wouldn’t stop laughing at me when we tried to film,” Mark muttered and Dark chuckled.

“So you got the mute amnesiac to pretend to be your date?!”

“Again, making it sound a lot worse than it was—”

“I doubt it!” Oh, God. You were going to have to talk to Amy about this, if only to reassure yourself that nothing weird happened. “Hold on. In the version of A Date with Markiplier I saw, there were ten different endings.”

“Really? We just had the one planned,” Mark said, but there was something off about his tone.

“Yeah,” you said, looking at Dark now. “There was one that made people think it was like a Groundhog Day thing, looping over and over again because of _someone_.”

“I…may have gotten involved when I realized you were there,” Dark admitted slowly, and was quick to add, “Considering the degrading situation Mark had you in, I was merely trying to—”

“Oh, stop it already,” Mark said. “You tried to get rid of me and do who knows what to Y/N—”

“Like you were any better! Who puts a bag over someone’s head?”

“You did it too! What kind of maniac brings a gun to a date?!”

“Wasn’t my date.”

You stopped them there. “Wait, this sounds like—I didn’t…shoot one of you, did I?”

Mark and Dark shared another one of those long, uneasy looks, and Mark said, “You know, this isn’t really important. We should be focusing on Wilford now.”

But you weren’t quite as ready to let it go. “And didn’t you say this had something to do with Wilford too? Is that why you had to cancel the project?”

“This episode is a bad one,” Dark agreed with Mark, which only made you even more suspicious. “We need to have a plan in case he comes back before it’s over.”

“You do know I’m just going to ask the Host what happened, right?” you asked.

“Great idea, Y/N! The Host should know where he’s at,” Mark said and pulled you out of the office. You sighed and followed along, if only because you wanted to hear what the Host had to say for yourself. Behind you, Dark stopped to lock the office door behind him and still managed to reach the downstairs hall at the same time as you and Mark, to find the Host slumped over in his chair, his hands to his face.

“Host? Hey buddy, are you okay?” Mark asked as he walked over to the ego, who flinched away at his touch and looked up. Now that you could see his face clearly, you realized that the bandages around his eyes were so soaked through that the blood had begun to trickle down his face. “What happened?”

“The Host just…strained himself,” the Host said, breathing heavily as though he had just been running. “The Host will recover.”

“Come on, you need to see the doctor,” Mark said. At first the ego resisted, and then he allowed Mark to pull one arm over his shoulder and support him. You moved forward to help and when the Host’s other arm was around you, you realized that he was shaking. You also realized that he was strangely quiet on the way to the infirmary and wondered if the tremors running through the body leaning heavily on you was really just from fatigue.


	4. The Host Refuses

Dr. Iplier looked up from tidying his desk when you all reached the infirmary and inhaled sharply at the sight of the Host. “Google, get some fresh bandages, would you?”

The yellow Google’s eyes unfocused from whatever search he had been in the middle of and he went to the closet while the doctor motioned you all toward an empty bed. There the Host sat with a heavy thump.

Dark waited until the Google handed off the bandages before he said, “Okay Google, I need you to round up the other egos in the conference room. Code Pink. Everyone except for the Host and Dr. Iplier.”

Google’s ‘G’ on his chest lit up as he passed the message along to the other units and then he walked out without a backward glance.

Dr. Iplier stared at Dark, the bandages forgotten in his hands. “Code…Oh, God, Wilford? Last time—”

“We do not need to talk about that,” Dark said, cutting him off with a glare that made the doctor look away. The Host turned his head toward Dark, his hand clenching.

“Host, where is Wilford now?” Dark asked.

“The Host cannot say.”

Mark cut in before Dark could respond and said, “You don’t have any idea? Maybe where he might go or do?”

“The Host does not know. The Host wishes that Markiplier and Dark would leave now.”

Mark stared at the Host as if he had just slapped him. “What?”

“How many times must the Host say that he does not know?” the Host asked, his voice rising. It was your turn to step back; you had never heard the Host raise his voice before or get angry about anything. “Wilford is gone, and all the Colonel cares about is finding the people he lost, at whatever the cost. He is looking for Damien, for Celine, for Y/N, and the Host will not help you find him.”

“’Will not’?” Dark repeated, his aura growing darker. “Before you said you couldn’t find him. Host, you know how dangerous Wilford is in this state—"

“And how do I know?”

Dark paused, surprised by both the question and the Host’s use of the first person.

“Why have Markiplier and Dark not told Y/N how dangerous the Colonel is? Why have they not told them what he can do? What he did to the Author, when he couldn’t bring Damien and Celine back?”

The Host stood on swaying feet but his blind gaze did not move away from Dark’s face as his bandages continued to drip. “Tell me, Darkiplier, how does the Host know?”

“Oh, God,” you said softly as the Host’s words sank in. “He didn’t…”

“Y/N, we should talk outside,” Mark said quietly. “I’ll explain on the way to the house.”

“What?” Dark turned on Mark now, his aura already close to the breaking point. “Y/N isn’t going anywhere, not until we find Wilford.”

“This is the first place he would look for them!” Mark threw out his arm to block Dark as he stepped forward and said, “No, I’m not arguing about this. They can’t stay here.”

“Markiplier is right,” the Host said.

Dark glared at the ego. “That’s enough from you. And if you think they’re any safer with you, then you must be delusional, Mark.”

“Darkiplier is also correct,” the Host said. You watched him closely and thought you saw the flicker of a spiteful smile on his lips when both men glared at him.

“No, I’m not staying here,” you said, but before Mark could say anything you continued, “I’m going to help look for Wilford, we need to—”

You could barely get the words out before Mark and Dark were both trying to talk over you, with Mark saying, “You need to stay away from Wilford until he’s back to—well, not normal, but regular crazy.”

“So, we’re just going to leave him alone?” you asked. “You can’t just wait until this ‘wears off’ or whatever, Wilford needs help before he does something he’ll regret!”

“Again,” Dr. Iplier muttered.

“We will find him,” Dark said, with a glare directed at the Host. “One way or another. But until then, you are not going anywhere near him.”

“Wilford wouldn’t—” You stopped. He wouldn’t what? He had already shot you once and came dangerously close to doing it again just minutes ago. And then there was the Host… You sighed and started again, “He sounded confused, like he didn’t even remember being Wilford, but that doesn’t mean he can’t find his way back here.”

“Or to Mark,” Dr. Iplier chimed in. He had moved to sit in an empty chair while he waited until you all would stop talking long enough for him to treat the Host. “Put you two together and Wilford’s bound to show up eventually, like last year—”

“We’re not talking about that!” Dark interrupted.

You glanced at the Host, but he just shrugged and said, “Then you must find somewhere else for Y/N to stay if you wish to keep them away from Wilford.”

“We can’t risk anyone who was at the house that weekend, in case he remembers them too,” Mark muttered to himself. “So that rules out Tyler.”

“And Abe,” you added. Dark’s aura flared at the name and you swore you saw the Host smile again.

“Amy would let you stay with her, and so would any of the others, but I can’t risk…” Mark trailed off, lost in his own thought.

“I know a place Wilford couldn’t reach them,” Dark said. You noticed that his aura was spreading as he looked at you and immediately realized what he was suggesting.

“No, absolutely not,” you said, backing away from Dark. “I am never going back there again.”

Mark looked from you to Dark and it clicked into place for him as well. “What? No! Not your weird angsty emo teen dimension!”

“Be reasonable,” Dark said. “It is the safest place for Y/N, and it would be like they were asleep for all of it, if you didn’t struggle this time.”

_“No,”_ you said again, putting as much weight and emphasis on the word as you could. If Dark so much as took another step toward you… “That place, it’s like being back in the mirror again. I am _not_ going back!”

Dark appeared offended at the comparison, but Dr. Iplier asked, “What if Y/N kept moving?”

“What do you mean?” Mark asked.

“Well, Jack’s about to start another leg of his tour, right? It seems to me that if Wilford’s current memories are as you say they are, then it’s questionable whether he would even know Jack, who is already aware of Y/N’s…situation.”

“That…could work,” Mark said, already pulling out his phone. “How did you think of that?”

“I was just talking to—” Dr. Iplier stopped short when Jack’s face showed up on Mark’s phone.

“Hey Mark!” he said, his voice as loud as the phone’s speakers would allow. You heard some banging in the background, like he was in the middle of moving something. “What’s up?”

Mark gave Jack the abridged version of what had happened with Wilford while Dark paced the room, scowling to himself. You helped the Host ease back into sitting on the bed, although he waved the doctor back so you could both listen in on the phone call without distraction. Dr. Iplier sighed as loudly as he could and plopped back into the chair, taking out his own phone as he did so.

“Yeah, we have some extra room on the bus, it might be tight but we could make it work,” Jack said but before Mark could do more than smile he hesitated and added, “The thing is, if Wilford did somehow find Y/N while we’re out on tour, I’m just not sure how much I could do without…_him_ getting involved.”

“Oh.” Mark looked crestfallen, and then worried. “He hasn’t…been giving you any issues lately, has he?”

“No, been keeping that PMA going,” Jack said, and you could hear the smile in his voice even if you couldn’t see the screen. “But after last time…”

“Yeah, yeah, I understand.” Mark seemed ready to end the call when Jack spoke again.

“But I do know some other guys they could stay with.”

Dark stopped his pacing and scowled at the phone. “You can’t mean those idiots.”

“Hey, those are my idiots!” Jack said. “And yes, I do. They’re more stable than your guys, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah, it wouldn’t take much to beat that,” Mark muttered. “Would they be willing to though? We don’t know how long Y/N would need to stay with them.”

“Been texting the doctor for five minutes now, he says if you won’t take them they will,” Dr. Iplier said without looking up from his phone. And here you thought he was playing a game.

“Oh.” Jack sounded surprised and it was soon followed by, “Oh, yeah, he’s texting me now. ‘When vill zey be ready?’ Why does he text in an accent too?!”

“I don’t know, you made him that way man,” Mark said. “Tell them to give us thirty minutes, that should be enough time. Thanks, Seán.”

“Yeah, keep me updated, okay?”

Dark waited until Mark and Jack hung up before he said, “This is a terrible idea.”

“Well, I think it’s a very good one, if I do say so myself,” Dr. Iplier said, but he wilted a little under Dark’s glare.

“It’s the best option we have,” Mark said. “If you don’t like it, then that just means we need to take care of Wilford that much faster. Y/N, how do you feel about Brighton?”

“I…What?” You shook your head. “Hold on, what did you just agree to? Don’t I get a say in this?”

“Exactly,” Dark said, sensing a pressure point. “What if Y/N doesn’t want to go? You can’t force them, Mark.”

“I’m not forcing anyone! This is just—”

“Can you please have this discussion outside?” Dr. Iplier interrupted. “Some of us, by which I mean I, have a patient to take care of.”

You let Mark and Dark walk ahead of you, both too busy arguing to notice as you stayed behind and asked the Host, “Are you okay?”

“No, the Host is not okay.” The Host clasped his trembling hands together and took a long, slow breath. “The Host is afraid, for himself, for Y/N, for the others. For Wilford.”

“Wilford, he…” You couldn’t say it, even as you looked at the bloodstained bandages around the Host’s eyes, but he nodded at the unsaid words. “But…But you’re friends with Wilford, or, well, you never seemed angry or afraid of him before.”

“The Colonel killed Y/N, and yet Y/N is friends with Wilford. Y/N is rarely afraid of Wilford.”

“That’s because—” You stopped, trying to put into words what the difference was. You remembered the tears streaming down Wilford’s cheeks even as he turned the gun on you. All of those repressed memories, all of that guilt and heartbreak, all at once, and he still didn’t understand. “I just…want to help him, if I can.”

“The Host hates the Colonel. The Host will always hate the Colonel, for what he did to the Author.” Venom laced the Host’s words, and another drip of blood escaped from his bandages before he sighed. “But the Host cannot hate Wilford, because Wilford is not the Colonel. The Colonel is what Wilford is when he has everything to lose again.”

“I’m sure that all of this makes some sense to you two, but if you don’t mind?” Dr. Iplier asked, holding up the bandages again.

“The Host requests that Y/N leave now. The Host does not wish for Y/N to see.”

“…Okay.” You walked to the door, glancing back only once before leaving to see the doctor was already unwinding the used bandages.

The Host waited until the door closed before he added softly to himself and the doctor, “The Host is concerned.”

“Welcome to the club,” Dr. Iplier replied, looking at where the Host’s eyes used to be.


	5. Priorities

When you walked out of the infirmary, Mark and Dark stopped in the middle of whatever they were arguing about now and Dark exhaled slowly until his aura settled down. Then he said, “Fine, if this is what you want, then so be it. I must go take care of the others. Perhaps one of _them_ can be useful.”

“The Host’s upset,” you said. “You need to give him time to calm down, maybe talk to him.”

“We do not have time to deal with his _feelings_. I intend to find Wilford as soon as possible and take care of this situation.” Dark straightened his jacket and cracked his neck before turning eyes on you. “Y/N, don’t get too comfortable with those fools. You’ll be back before you know it.”

He turned and stalked away before you could figure out if that was supposed to be reassuring or not.

Mark watched him walk away and sighed before he said, “Come on, you should probably pack.”

“I’m already packed, remember?” you said, gesturing toward the backpack you were still wearing. “Enough for a couple of days at your place.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t know how long you’ll be gone,” Mark pointed out as he started to walk away.

“Mark, the stairs are this way.”

“Oh, right.”

He walked slightly behind you as you led the way upstairs to your room, where he hung around the door while you added some more clothes to your bag. Not that you had much more to add, considering you only owned so much, so it felt more like you were moving instead of just going away for a few days.

“I should probably warn you about where you’re going,” Mark started as you struggled to zip up the backpack.

“You’re sending me to stay with Jack’s egos, right?”

Mark stared. “You know about them?”

“I mean, it wasn’t that hard to figure out. Plus, the Jack where I’m from had egos too.” You shouldered the backpack and found a rock the King of the Squirrels gave you to prop the door open while you were gone.

“What’s that for?” Mark asked.

“Badger.” Couldn’t hurt to be too careful there. “Where did your egos come from, anyways? I know who Dark and Wilford used to be, but what about the rest of these guys?”

Mark looked from you to the door as if trying to figure out if he heard you correctly and then had to catch up with you on your way to the stairs before he could answer. “They didn’t ‘used to be’ anyone, except maybe the Jims. Not sure what’s going on with those two. The rest, they just…showed up, one by one. I guess you could say they used to be me, or the characters that I played.”

“Do you know why?” you asked.

“Not really, they were just accidents I guess.” Mark shrugged but you felt like there was something a little off with his answer. “Jack and I have tried to come up with some theories, like maybe the fans have something to do with it. All that belief and energy pointed at one thing, you know?”

You reached the bottom of the stairs and hesitated. It was quiet in the house, with most of the egos upstairs in the conference room. Usually there would be the TV playing in the living room, or the normal sounds of video games or arguing or something blowing up.

“So, if they’re kind of you, then doesn’t that make it a little weird that they all look up to Dark and Wilford?” you asked.

“What?” Mark stared at you.

“I just mean, why is Dark the one getting them all together for a meeting? Shouldn’t you be up there too?”

“I want to make sure you leave okay. Besides, half of them can’t stand me,” Mark said. He saw your confused expression and shrugged. “What can I say, I have a low opinion of myself. Guess that carried over. Besides, ever since Dark’s felt like he’s in control of something he’s been bothering me and my friends less, with the bonus of keeping these guys in line so I don’t have to.”

You weren’t so sure about that last part. As much as you loved hanging around the egos, they got up to some very questionable things. Just the other day you had to talk Bim down from feeding one of his interns to his pet chiranhas, and the last time you tried to do laundry Yandereplier gave you an entire seminar on how to get bloodstains out of clothes. “But if you created them, then doesn’t that kind of make you like a bad dad who just drops in whenever he feels like it while someone else takes care of his kids?”

Mark frowned and held up his hand. “Okay, first off, don’t make me into a stereotype. And two, I’m not anybody’s dad. Just want to make that absolutely, one hundred percent clear: not a dad.”

“Okay, whatever you say, Dadiplier.” You paused and shuddered. “Yeah, you’re right, I’m not calling you that. Still, don’t you think maybe it wouldn’t hurt to spend some time with them? The Host seemed pretty upset.”

“He also seemed like he really didn’t want to talk to me,” Mark pointed out as you both walked down the hall toward the front door. “They’ve gotten by pretty well without me before now, and once Wilford’s back to relatively normal they’ll go back to how they’ve always been. You saw them after the whole thing with the mask situation; a few weeks and it’s like nothing ever happened. That’s just how the egos _are_.”

You thought about correcting him on that, but Mark had told Jack you would only need thirty minutes and this might be your last chance to talk some sense into him. “Mark, I know what you’re trying to do but I can help you look for Wilford. He needs—”

“He doesn’t need you,” Mark said, as bluntly as he could. “Y/N, you want to help, I get that, but do you really think seeing you is going to help Wilford right now? Seeing ‘you’ get back up again is what drove him off the deep end in the first place, you would just…”

He trailed off, realizing too late that he might have said too much as you stared back at him. “Y/N, I didn’t mean—”

“…No, you’re right,” you said quietly, as much as you hated to admit it. What if seeing you again sent the Colonel into another panic? “I might just make things worse.”

The rest of the thirty minutes passed in silence, neither of you sure what to say to the other, until there was a loud knock at the front door. Mark opened the door to find the doorstep completely empty. There was a bang and you turned in time to see a puff of green smoke behind you before it faded to reveal a man in a cape with a cat mask.

“Ta-da!” He blinked and looked around. “No, wait, this is the wrong side of the door. Hang on, I got this…”

“Hello, Marvin,” Mark said, dragging the words out like it hurt him. “You don’t really need to do it again.”

“Hello, you must be Y/N,” the magician said as he bounded forward to shake your hand. “Name’s Marvin the Magnificent, I’m here to pick you up! Oh, wait, there’s something in your hand, let me just—”

He tugged on your hand and came away with a bouquet of paper flowers.

You gave him a weak smile, a little unnerved by just how much he looked like Jack. You thought you’d gotten used to it hanging around the Ipliers, but aside from the still green hair and mask… “That was pretty cool!”

Marvin grinned and tossed the paper flowers, smacking Mark in the face with them (probably) on accident. “There’s more where that came from!”

“Please no,” Mark muttered, letting the flowers fall to the floor where they turned into squirrels and scurried out the still open door. It looked like the King of the Squirrels just gained some very new and probably very confused subjects.

“Wait, you just came all the way from Brighton?” you asked. “Just like that?”

Marvin’s grin grew wider, more like a Cheshire cat now. “You bet! Well, more or less. Our place is like this one, a little less ‘real’, so the location’s kind of hard to pin down. Bit faster than flying, bit less peanuts.”

“They don’t—” Mark sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, suddenly reminding you very much of Dark when his patience was wearing thin. “Look, this is serious, okay? As in I’m trusting you to protect Y/N from a potentially murderous psychopath with a very slim grip on reality. You guys do understand that, right?”

“Pft, do you have any idea how many times we’ve had to deal with Anti? Wilford’s practically a poster child for mental health compared to that maniac.” Marvin caught Mark’s expression and continued, “What I mean is, we know how to take care of ourselves. There’s nowhere safer for Y/N.”

Mark didn’t look reassured as he told you, “Call if you need anything. We’ll try to keep you updated on what’s going on here.”

“You be careful too, okay?” you said, remembering as you said it that Mark was in just as much danger from the Colonel as you were. If there was anyone he would want to take a crack at shooting again…

Mark seemed surprised when you hugged him, but he returned it all the same. There was no memory, and no vision of what might come next, as much as you wanted some reassurance that everything would be okay.

Marvin held out a gloved hand when you both were done saying goodbye and after a moment of hesitation you took it. There was a tug, a pull that felt suspiciously like when Dark sent you into his realm earlier, but once the roar of noise was over you two were standing in what looked to be a kitchen, about half the size of the one at the Iplier house.

Marvin let go and grumbled something about aiming for the living room, but you turned when a nerf dart passed by your head and stuck to the fridge to find a bar behind you separating the kitchen from the living room in question. Four other men stared back at you before the whole room erupted into noise and greetings.

Back at the Iplier house, Mark hesitated and looked in the direction of the infirmary before pulling out his phone. The screen was lit up with messages, mostly from Tyler, with some from Ethan, Bob, and Wade as well, plus one in all caps from the Detective. He sighed and called up Tyler as he walked out of the house.

“Yeah, I’m on my way. We’ll check the usual places first.”

Priorities, after all.


	6. Meet the Crew

“Saaah, dude, sorry about that!” said the one holding the nerf gun who was lounging with his feet up on the arm of the couch. He cried out when another ego, this one dressed in what looked like one step above red footy pajamas with a hood, pushed his cap down over his face before bounding across the room to you.

“Hey, you must be Y/N! Nice to meet you, I’m Jackieboy Man,” he said and posed almost like it was as a reflex, kind of like Dr. Iplier and telling people they’re dying. “Silver’s told me a lot about you! I’m sure he’s mentioned me plenty of times.”

“Uh, not really?” you said. “Sorry.”

Jackieboy immediately wilted a little before recovering. “Yeah, of course, can’t talk too much about the job at home, I get that. Point is, Schneeps filled us in on what’s going on and we’re glad to help out. You met Marvin already, but that’s Chase,”

He pointed at the nerf gun wielding bro on the couch.

“That’s Jameson, he doesn’t talk much,”

He gestured toward the silent ego standing near the hall, who was much more dapperly dressed than the other egos with his white shirtsleeves and vibrant blue vest and black hat, whose eyes had lit up when you appeared in the kitchen. He gave you a familiar smile and you returned the small wave he sent your way.

“And Dr. Schneeplestein.”

“It is good to be seeing you again, Y/N!” Dr. Schneeplestein said with a German (?) accent. Like Dr. Iplier, he wore his scrubs and white coat even outside the infirmary, his face mask dangling around his neck. Of the five egos, he was the only one who was sporting his natural hair color like Jack; the rest all still had various shades of green.

“I…don’t think we’ve met before?” you said, not as certain as you would have liked. After all, you couldn’t even remember meeting most of Mark’s friends from back when you were connected to the mirror shard he took from the house.

“Ah, yes, you vere sleeping zhen, after ze mirror is breaking,” Dr. Schneeplestein explained. “Dr. Iplier vas busy with ze not dying, so Jack asked us to help ze Ipliers out.”

“And then Dark tossed us out,” Chase said. “Totally not cool.”

“I think that might have had something to do with you and Bing accidentally setting the kitchen on fire after watching too many ‘How to Basic’ videos,” Marvin said as he hopped up onto the kitchen bar and started twirling a coin back and forth between his fingers.

“Okay, again, we _meant_ for that to happen. How else are you supposed to make s’mores?”

The coin stopped in between Marvin’s index and middle finger as he looked at Chase. “Any other way?”

“Ze point is, ve are all very glad you are here,” Schneeplestein said. He surprised you by walking around the bar and pulling you into a hug.

“Uh, thank you?” you said. You didn’t mind the hug but weren’t sure where it came from.

The doctor pulled back and looked at you closely, looking mildly disappointed. “Dr. Iplier told me much about your condition and ze memory problems and ze visions.”

“Wait, he did?”

“Oh, yes, he is getting the pressure to come up vith ideas to help you, so I have been looking into it. He tells me you are remembering nothing new after the mirror broke?”

“Yeah, nothing from before…all of that.” You weren’t sure how you felt about Dr. Iplier telling someone else about that, especially since you had never really talked to him about it in the first place. You could probably get it in two guesses who was pressuring the doctor to do something. That explained the hug though, and you added, “No visions either.”

But you remembered that second in the office, when you had seen Dark as Celine, as the Seer. Had that just been your imagination? A more uncomfortable thought made you wonder if that was how Wilford saw Dark in that moment.

At that, all of them (minus Jameson) were all going at once, some asking questions, Dr. Schneeplestein attempting to explain, Jackieboy assuring you that they would help you get your memories back, basically everyone talking over each other to the point it was almost like being back at the Iplier house. There might not be as many Septic egos, but they definitely made up for it with noise and energy.

“I have heard smells are good for ze memory,” Schneeplestein suggested.

Marvin tilted his head. “So, what, we just find something that smells like the 1920s or 30s or whenever the DA’s from?”

“Oh, I know!” Jackieboy grabbed Jameson and pushed him into you. “Here, sniff this!”

_“Whoa there, easy with the hands!”_

You blinked and had to steady yourself on the bar. You didn’t so much hear the words as see them flash in front of your eyes, like an old timey speech slide. “What was that?”

“Oh, good, you can see those,” Jackieboy said cheerfully, ignoring Jameson as he stepped back and readjusted his hat while his mustache twitched back and forth in indignation. “That’s how JJ talks, when he’s not using sign language.”

A nerf dart hit Jackieboy in the back of the head and Marvin caught the superhero by the hood to keep him from going after the cheering Chase.

“Yeah, don’t think smelling Jameson’s going to work,” Marvin said.

“I have some other ideas ve could try…” Schneeplestein said, stroking his chin. Jameson mimicked him, stroking his own chin in a more exaggerated way until he raised a finger with an “aha” expression and ran out of the room. Schneeps shrugged and added, “But maybe you would like ze tour first?”

“Oooh, I’ll do it!” Jackieboy said, waving his hand like he was a five-year-old volunteering in the classroom.

“Okay,” you said, barely getting the word out before he was pulling you down the hall and showing you one room after another. You were starting to get the feeling that this was just going to be how it was at the Septic house, a lot of bouncing from one thing to another.

The place felt smaller than the Iplier house, but there did seem to be a lot of extra rooms and space that Jackieboy shrugged off as just how it was, saying it made it easy for the egos to do their own thing, like the conference room that Chase used for his Bro Average show, or Jackieboy’s training room. You declined his offer to practice some sparring for now, and he took you by Schneeplestein’s infirmary and Marvin’s storeroom for all of his magic props (quickly shutting the door when something tried to reach out) before stopping at one of the bedrooms.

“You can use this room, if you like,” Jackieboy said, opening the door to show you. “This one’s closer to the rest of us, but there are others around if you want some more space.”

“No, this is fine,” you said. You put your backpack on the bed and Jackieboy seemed to realize that maybe you needed a minute because he said he would go check on the others. A few seconds later you heard Chase loudly celebrating a trick shot. You shut the door on Jackieboy shouting and sat down on the bed, pulling out your phone as you did so.

No missed calls, no messages. No news, but then it had only been a few minutes, even if it felt like hours. Where would Wilford go? Where would the Colonel go? Considering he acted like he didn’t even know who Wilford was anymore, he would be dealing with a world that had aged eighty-plus years from what he remembered.

You sighed and rubbed your eyes. There wasn’t much you could do about that, after all. The thought occurred to you that the District Attorney might have some idea, but they didn’t even meet until the night of the poker party.

_Seeing ‘you’ get back up again is what drove him off the deep end in the first place._

Sometimes you really wanted to hit Mark, even if he was right. You buried your head in your hands, trying hard to drown the words out.

_No, that’s enough._ You forced yourself to breathe, to let it go. You might not be able to do anything about Wilford, but, well, the Septic egos seemed more than eager to help you with your own memory problems. It couldn’t hurt to try to remember, right? Better than hanging around here thinking about what you can’t do. You stood up and braced yourself to rejoin the others. The Septic egos definitely required a different kind of mindset than hanging around the Ipliers.

Back at the Iplier house, Dark was quickly losing his patience for said egos. He sat at the head of the conference table with his hands tightly clasped together and tried very hard to remind himself that they could be useful. After all, he had all four Googles performing reverse image searches and scanning the web while Bing trolled through social media for any sightings of Wilford. Silver Shepherd was busy tapping away on his phone, getting in touch with other superheroes who would likely cross paths with the man. Even the King of the Squirrels claimed that he had his subjects searching for Wilford, and while Dark wasn’t sure how true that was, it was more than he expected from the ego. The others, however…

“Seems to me we could just wait it out,” Ed Edgar said as he leaned back in his chair, one arm over the back. “Ol’ Warfstache always comes back eventually, don’ see why we have to go runnin’ around like chickens what’s got their heads lopped off.”

“Because the trouble Wilford causes never comes back on us,” Bim Trimmer said sarcastically. “I don’t need my show’s ratings going down just because people are tuning in to watch yet another police chase with him.”

“Hey now, watchin’ a man outrun the police on a tricycle is what I call high-quality entertainment, better than whatever’s on that game show of yours,” Edgar said. He added in a mutter, “Stupid show producers wouldn’t even let an ‘onest businessman sponsor them, don’ know what’s wrong with people these days.”

“Yeah, it was the producers that said no to that,” Bim said to the side before the Jims jumped into the conversation.

One of the Jims said, “Well, it’s clear to me, Jim, Wilford’s going to go back to where it all started, the deep dark heart of this whole affair.”

Dark tensed up, the ringing in his aura reaching a new higher pitch.

Jim, who was standing because they had run out of chairs and the Jims could never sit still anyways, leaned forward over the table and said in a low voice that still carried to everyone seated: _“The ice cream parlor.”_

Dark relaxed, not that there was much of a difference to look at him. This Wilford affair was making him paranoid. After all, the Host and Dr. Iplier were the only ones who knew about what happened at Markiplier Manor, and only then by necessity. The Jims probably should have counted as well considering they were actually there when it happened, but…

“I could go for some ice cream with Senpai,” Yandereplier mused without looking up from a drawing of said Senpai with lots of exaggerated hearts. “Do we really have to stay here?”

“Yes,” Dark said, as much as he dreaded the threat of cabin fever setting in among the egos. “No one is to leave the house until Wilford is back unless they are helping search for him, and even then, only with my permission.”

The blue Google’s eyes changed color as he paused his search and he said, “Incorrect. A scan indicates that Y/N is no longer in the house.”

“With my permission,” Dark said through his teeth. Of course someone would point that out. “Y/N is staying…elsewhere for the time being.”

Google’s ‘G’ lit up for a moment as he stored that information but he went back to his search without a word. If the others thought there was anything strange, they said nothing. Then again, they probably just assumed you were staying with Mark again.

“Which ice cream shop are we talkin’ about here?” Ed asked.

While the conversation quickly devolved into a discussion of gluten free ice cream and what counted as ‘real’ flavors, Dark began to tune the others out, his eyes lingering on the other head of the table. Even though the room was far too crowded, the egos knew without anyone putting it into words to leave that space open. Dark tapped his fingers on the table as he stared at the empty space, paying little attention to how the conversation slowly died out as his aura began to grow and split erratically, the ringing not drowning out the faint screaming and creaking coming from within.

He had so little patience.


	7. Avoidance

By the time you returned to the living room, most of the other egos had spread out. You had heard Chase on the phone when you passed by the conference room, but it looked as though Jameson was still doing whatever he had run off to do, and Schneeplestein was nowhere to be seen while Jackieboy had taken over the couch.

Marvin looked over the top of the fridge door when you came in and said, “Oh, hey Y/N. I was thinking we could give Schneeps’s smell idea another try, see if we can stir up some memories that way.”

“Don’t listen to him, he just wants to get out of cooking dinner again,” Jackieboy said without looking up from his phone.

“I don’t mind helping out,” you said as you walked around the bar. You doubted the smell of beef or whatever would trigger anything, but the most Chef Iplier ever let you help out in the kitchen was peeling potatoes or washing dishes. “What do you need me to do?”

You jumped as a loud tune came from Jackieboy’s phone, but Marvin didn’t even look over his shoulder as he said, “We’ll leave your plate in the oven.”

Jackieboy waved, already on his way out the door, and slowed only long enough to tell you, “I’ll let you know if I hear anything on the streets!” He just barely remembered to pull his blue mask down over his eyes on the way out.

As you and Marvin cooked, you couldn’t help but think it was a little early to be eating this kind of stuff—that is, until you glanced at the clock and remembered that time zones were a thing. Brighton was 8 hours ahead of LA, apparently, and a look out the window told you there were just a couple of hours left before the sun went down, even though it felt like not that long ago you were just getting up.

Which is probably why you didn’t feel tired later, not even after most of the other egos had retreated to their rooms. Chase found you wandering the halls and said, “Can’t sleep, huh?”

“Yeah, time zones,” you said, even though you doubted you would have been able to sleep back at Mark’s place or the Iplier house any easier. It’s why you were pacing now; sitting still just made it that much easier to focus on everything that had happened today, to the point your head started to spin.

“I get that,” Chase said, nodding knowingly. “You know what I like to do when I can’t sleep?”

A minute later you and Chase were back in the living room, an open box of tea bags in between you.

“Okay, now aim for the cup this time,” Chase said.

“I _was_ aiming for the cup,” you pointed out, even if ringing the lampshade had been enough to send Chase into hysterical whooping just a second ago. The cup in question was balanced on top of the TV, and the ground around the TV stand was littered with tea bags.

You missed, but when Chase managed to get his next throw in he screamed, “Did you see that?!” and laughed like it was the greatest thing in the world. You weren’t…quite as enthusiastic, but his fun was infectious to the point you were helping come up with trick shot ideas as he chatted away. Turns out he was friends with Bing, which made sense, although again you wondered why you had never seen the two of them together before. Then again, maybe it was the distance issue?

Chase pulled out his phone and showed you some pictures of him with Bing while telling you about their epic marathon of Fortnite. Sure, they didn’t actually _win_, but Chase assured you that it was really more about how cool you looked playing. That explained why you didn’t see Bing at all last weekend; you had kind of just assumed he had done something to end up in the infirmary until Dr. Iplier felt like repairing him again.

Chase swiped past the picture of him and Bing dabbing and paused on a picture of himself with two kids, both with his eyes. It was just for a second, and then the phone was away and he was jumping up with a shout of, “Hey, how about we play a video game? How do you feel about first-person shooters?”

You were getting pretty good at telling when someone didn’t want to talk about something at this point, so you let Chase rope you into playing a round of PUBG, which quickly turned into several more rounds until Jackieboy appeared at the door, his half-warmed plate in hand, and told Chase off for keeping you up so late. He didn’t have any news for you, so you left them to argue it out and went back to your room. On your way, you noticed that as much as Jackieboy was telling Chase to go to bed, it didn’t look like any of the other egos were getting sleep. The light was clearly on in Dr. Schneeplestein’s office when you passed by the infirmary, and you heard some kind of murmuring, or chanting maybe coming from Marvin’s bedroom, although it was almost drowned out by the sound of music from Jameson’s room, each song barely lasting for a few seconds before it suddenly stopped and another took its place, like he was looking for one in particular.

So, you didn’t feel alone in staying up, although you did at least make the effort to lie down on your bed in the dark in the hope that maybe sleep would come eventually. It might have helped if you could have stopped yourself from constantly checking your phone in the hopes that someone might have called or sent you a message to let you know what was going on, but you only did that because your mind wouldn’t stop going through one question after the next. There were so many now, about Wilford, about the Host, about what exactly happened last year around Valentine’s Day, about your own memories.

But there was one in particular that came to mind as you finally started to drift to sleep, your eyes staring up at the ceiling: Who could you thank for the Chris Pratt poster above your bed?

While you lay there in the dark, it was still light out when the Colonel arrived at Markiplier Manor, or what remained of it. He had tried Damien’s home first, then the little apartment where he and Celine would get together when they could steal time away, but everything had been wrong. The streets were the same, but the buildings had all changed or were gone or turned into offices or a big box store where the people stared at the man with the funny pink mustache and suspenders and the not quite as funny gun. None of them made any sense, they just didn’t seem to understand for some reason, and so he had to come here to find some clue where they might be hiding.

His head buzzed like little pink sparks of lightning were jumping from one thought to the next as he walked around, taking it all in. The fire had done its work, leaving only a burnt-out framework that seemed so small in comparison to the huge house that once stood here, although the stone balcony and tower seemed largely untouched. He would have to have a word with the gardener though, who seemed to have let the golf green become completely overrun with weeds, and he didn’t know what kind of spiders had taken over the gazebo, but they were big and hairy and disturbingly good at dodging bullets. He hadn’t seen any like those since his days in Jumanji. The first bit of sadness he felt at the sight of the place came when he found the pool, cracked and dry.

That was a shame, he could have used a swim about now.

He walked through the house, ashes staining his shoes as he stepped over the remains of walls and wandered from one room to the next.

“Damien?” he called, just in case. “Celine?”

No one answered, but he was used to that. He would find them anyways.

To his delight, he found a flight of stone stairs underneath a couple of broken beams that moved with just a little bit of effort. He jauntily walked down them, heedless of the darkness until his eyes readjusted and he recognized the cellar.

_Markiplier stood in front of him and aimed his gun. There was silence, and then the click of an empty barrel before he gave the gun to the Colonel. It was fair, it was just a game, it wasn’t even his fault that Mark was lying on the ground, how could it be, it wasn’t his idea, he didn’t load the gun, Mark told him to shoot, he told him to do it—_

The Colonel sank into the corner. It was nice and cool down here in the shade, after all, and for some reason he was just so tired. He couldn’t even remember how he got here now that he thought about it, and well, Damien and Celine had been waiting this long…

He woke to the sound of voices overhead and quickly, quietly stood up, his gun in his hand.

“He’s not here.” The voice sighed and the Colonel’s grip tightened on the gun. Markiplier!

He paused on the first step up when he heard a second voice, this one also familiar in a distant sort of way, say, “Well, we had to check. There are only so many places he would go. For all we know we just missed him, or he hasn’t gotten here yet.”

The Colonel had a hazy memory of some kind of butler, although his accent sounded different now.

“So, what are we supposed to do? Wait around?” Mark was pacing, getting closer, and the Colonel braced himself.

“Where did he go last time?” Tyler asked, from a distance. He was too far away to help Mark, if the Colonel went out now…

“He didn’t _go_ anywhere, he went straight for the Author, it’s like he knew—” Mark sighed and stopped. “And then there’s that whole thing with Y/N around Valentine’s Day last year.”

“He never had this many episodes so close together before, right?” Tyler asked. “It’s almost like they’re getting worse.”

“More than almost,” Mark muttered, the Colonel only hearing the words because he was so close to the cellar steps now. A few more feet and he would surely notice, surely peer in to take a look. But when Mark spoke again, it sounded like he had turned around to face Tyler. “I’ve been thinking, once this is over, maybe Y/N shouldn’t be around Wilford as much. Or at all.”

“Yeah, because they’re going to take that idea well,” Tyler said sarcastically.

“Well, I was thinking maybe you could drop the idea by them first…” Mark was moving away now, and slowly the Colonel realized that they were leaving as he heard the following argument fade away. He heard the distant start of an engine followed by the crackling of tires on the drive, but he stood alone in the darkness for a long time afterward.

Why? Mark came back. You came back. So why hadn’t Celine and Damien come back yet? What was taking them so long? Where were they hiding?

These thoughts plagued him as he walked up into the burnt house and stepped through the wreckage, hardly caring where he was going until he heard the crunch of glass beneath his feet. He glanced down at the broken pieces of mirror and a stray thought brushed across his clouded mind, as faint as a distant echo:

_It’s not fair, is it?_


	8. Doctor's Notes

You slept late the next day, no thanks to someone, you weren’t sure who, opening your bedroom door with a cry of “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya” before you threw the stuffed Septic Sam on the nightstand at them and buried your head under the pillow. When you finally risked opening your eyes to the sunlight coming in through the window, you saw a single text message on your phone from Mark. It looked as though he had sent it around midnight his time.

_No luck. Will keep looking._

You groaned and let the phone slide out of your hand. Eventually you dragged yourself out of bed and made an attempt at getting ready for the day before heading to the living room.

“Ah, Y/N, would you like breakfast or lunch?” Dr. Schneeplestein asked brightly. “I was thinking something to go, because I have things I am wishing to show you.”

“Sure?”

He poured himself a glass of banana milk and then watched you make a sandwich, practically bouncing up and down with impatience as he did so, and when he caught you yawning said, “Ah, ze time difference is kicking your booty.”

“Yeah, you could say that,” you said. “What is it you want to show me?”

Dr. Schneeplestein grinned. “I have ze notes from Dr. Iplier, and some research of my own on your conditions. It is not much, but enough I think to start.”

You were more than curious enough to follow the doctor to his office in the infirmary, although you frowned at the bulky folders sitting on his desk. “Wait, you have all of that from just a couple of weeks? How much research did you do?”

“Ah, no, zis is my notes,” Dr. Schneeplestein said, holding up one of the folders. It was green, of course, with a pretty good Septic Sam doodled on the front. He gestured toward the other folders and said, “Zhese came from Dr. Iplier, he is very good about sending me copies of his notes to look over so we can talk and bounce ideas around. This one is since you left ze mirror. He is very interested in your visions, how your injuries they heal themselves. He talked to me while you were recovering all that night until I am ze one falling asleep, and he is just as interested when ze visions stop along with ze memories.”

You pulled the folder closer and opened it to find page after page of typed notes. There were also pictures of the wound on your chest with timestamps marked in the upper corner, showing how quickly it healed over a few hours. You didn’t look too closely at those, as even the thought made your chest ache again. Plus, you know, your breakfast was right there. You paused on one paragraph of notes when you saw the Host’s name and read:

_From what I understand, these ‘visions’ appear to happen whenever the patient comes into contact with Markiplier, Darkiplier, or Wilford Warfstache. Contact with any of the others has not shown any similar reaction. Given the three’s connection to Y/N and to the events that led to their current situation, the link seems clear enough. Based on the Host’s interpretation, such visions may also be foreshadowing of possible futures related to the three or Y/N’s own missing memories. The Host admitted his own inability to see these visions, and when I mentioned that they seemed like a limited version of his own abilities he did not respond. I suspect this has something to do with his own interest in the patient, to the point of almost being protective._

It sounded authoritative, if you ignored the fact that apparently Dr. Iplier used the ability to add notes in the margins as an opportunity to doodle or scribble in barely legible handwriting stuff like: _I don’t know, some supernatural thing. Ask Marvin?_ or _Host as talkative as ever, lol_. You had to admit, his drawing of the Host down in the corner was impressive.

“Wait,” you said when you looked up. “If this folder’s stuff from when I got here, and that folder’s your own notes, then what’s in those?”

You pointed at the other two folders, which were pale blue like the one in your hand.

“Oh, zat? Zey are from before of course, after Mark took a piece of mirror from ze house with you inside.” Dr. Schneeplestein paused to consider and added, “You fit in very small piece, is very strange when Dr. Iplier is telling me.”

“He…What?” Without waiting for a response, you opened up one of the other folders and started going through the notes which started years ago.

_Patient unresponsive to all stimuli…Patient unresponsive…Patient opens eyes occasionally; light tests show no response to outside stimuli…_

There were pages of it, test after test with nothing to show for it, interspersed with printouts of emails between the two doctors. You picked up the second folder and the first page had a photo paper-clipped to it, of you sitting on the edge of a chair in clothes you didn’t recognize, your eyes unfocused.

_Patient unresponsive unless Markiplier is in the room…Patient appears to recognize name but questioning still gets no response…Patient appears unable to speak, even when desiring to do so…Patient is expressing more individuality, although still mute. Time outside of the mirror is steadily growing longer with each appearance…Tests show patient’s memory is still questionable. I have found it necessary to reintroduce myself with each examination, and Markiplier claims their memory of others is also hit or miss…Patient tends to focus on Mark, with a trusting obedience that I find worrying…Mark called me over again to examine the patient. He seems worried that their time outside of the mirror has begun to decrease, although I observed no change in their vitals or behavior._

You flipped through page after page, skimming through bits and pieces here and there but the more you read the more lost you felt.

“He…all this time?” you said, unable to even form a coherent question.

“Vell, of course, Markiplier is very worried about you, and zere aren’t many qualified doctors like myself he could take you to,” Schneeplestein pointed out. “It was a big secret, Dr. Iplier cannot tell any of the other egos, but I am not an Iplier, and the doctor, he likes the gossip. I offered to examine you many times, but he is afraid to let Mark know he told me. Mark was very paranoid I think, even when Jack offered to see if Marvin or I could help. But Darkiplier finds out anyways, and zhen ze big panic. Even zhen, both make Dr. Iplier be very hush hush, no telling the other egos. I do not understand why.”

Big panic? If it happened after Dark found out Mark had you around, then you thought you could guess. “When you say panic, was this a little before Valentine’s Day last year?”

“Yes! Do you remember?” Schneeplestein asked, only seeming a little down when you shook your head no. “Ah, vell. I do not know the story, Dr. Iplier is very busy after and never told me details. Ve could video chat him now, ask him questions if you vant.”

You started to say yes, you wanted to so bad, but a suspicion stopped you just in time. “Did Dr. Iplier tell you about the Valentine’s Day project before it happened?”

“Yes, we have video call. I remember he is wondering if you will have ze stamina for filming, but I tell him it would be good for you to get out more. Too long in zat house, it is no wonder you are always sleeping.”

You let this sink in and thought it over. Dark had found a way to listen in on your phone calls before, and if he thought the doctor was hiding something from him, you wouldn’t put it past him to keep an eye on his computer as well.

“Do you mind if we wait to talk to Dr. Iplier?” you asked. “There’s someone I should talk to first.”

Back in your room you found a voicemail on your phone, from Abe. His voice was scratchy and thick, and guessing what time it was there you could easily imagine him fighting sleep after being on his feet all day and all night.

“Hey Partner. I found a place to lay low and do some digging. I have a couple of leads I’m going to look into soon, if I can get them to talk to me. That butler called and it sounds like Mark has no clue what he’s doing, as usual. He did say you’re out of town in some safe house or something, wouldn’t tell me where, but if you get any leads or need anything just call, got it?”

You heard the gurgle of a coffee machine in the background and the Detective said, “Oh, gotta go, bye.”

A beep followed the end of the message and you closed the voicemail without deleting it. You weren’t too surprised that he was looking for Wilford, even if it was basically the opposite of what you told him to do, but you sent him a message to remind him that sleep was a thing before you went to another app on your phone.

It wasn’t one you used before, even though it was already on the phone when Dark gave it to you. It was a ‘G’ icon whose background rotated between blue, green, red, and yellow every time you opened your phone. When you pressed it now, the phone acted as though it was calling someone.

Except it did not even have time to ring before the blue shirted Google answered, his face filling the screen as he seemed to be looking down at you.

“Y/N,” he said. It wasn’t a greeting, just an observation.

There was something you noticed about Google that Dark never really seemed to catch onto, maybe because he enjoyed ordering the androids around so much, and that was while Google might be _required_ to follow a command, it didn’t always mean he wouldn’t find a way to make it backfire, or to twist the meaning around even if it didn’t actually benefit him in any way. However, if you made a deal, such as to remove a certain demonic entity’s control over your phone…

“Google,” you said, “I need another favor.”

Google’s eyes flashed as he processed the request, and then he smiled. “Tell me more.”

“Does Dark have access to Dr. Iplier’s computer?”

“This unit is not allowed to answer that question.”

Not a no, which meant yes.

“Google, I need to have a video chat with Dr. Iplier, one where Dark can’t listen or watch or even know it happened. Can you do that?”

Google barely even needed a second to consider it. “I can do a lot of things, Y/N. It doesn’t mean I will.”

You moved the phone to a better position to hold it, feeling that this wasn’t going to be a short conversation. “You know I’ll return the favor, just like last time. Just tell me what you want.”

Google on his end stared down at the holographic screen, his eyes flashing as the ‘G’ symbol on his chest grew brighter, a sign that he was pulling on processing from all four units. It lasted for several minutes, which definitely hadn’t happened last time. Finally, his eyes returned to normal and he gave you a deeply unsettling smile.

“We want information.”


	9. Pretend Like You Care

While you and Google were coming to an agreement, Dr. Iplier was sweeping his own infirmary, music blaring out of the computer in question. He sang into the handle of his broom as his favorite part of the song came up:

_“Is it a city or a sin?_

_Oh when did I begin?_

_Somebody call the doctor!”_

He sang shouted the words as he spun around, but the next verse played on without him as he locked eyes with the man standing at the door.

“Uh…” Mark said.

“Can I help you?” Dr. Iplier asked, brushing his hair back into place with his hand as though nothing had just happened. “You’re a little early for your next exam.”

“No, I was just looking for the Host,” Mark said, very aware of the dirty look the doctor sent his shoes, which were still covered in ashes from yesterday’s trip to the house. Who had the energy to clean this early in the morning? “He, uh, isn’t here I guess.”

“You could try his room, or his recording studio,” Dr. Iplier suggested. When Mark hesitated, he sighed and added, “His room’s just down the hall from Y/N’s. The recording studio is on the third floor, big sign out front. If you see the conference room, you’ve passed it. Think you can find it?”

“Oh, yeah, sure, thanks,” Mark said, sounding just confident enough that the doctor could tell he was lying.

“Of course, if the Host knows you’re looking for him, odds are he’ll find you first,” he added to Mark’s retreating back. He watched Mark leave and the door had barely shut behind him before the next song started to play over the speakers. Dr. Iplier grinned and got back to his cleaning as he sang along to “Witch Doctor.”

Mark walked through the house, thankful that he avoided running into any of the other egos before he found the stairs. After what you said yesterday, combined with a long talk with Amy where she completely failed to take his side for some reason, he figured that it couldn’t hurt to maybe talk to the Host. Besides, it might be enough to get him to help find Wilford.

He slowed as he passed Dark’s office, but the door was shut and he doubted Dark could hear anything over the noises coming from within. By the sound of it, his aura was shattering all over the place, and the last thing Mark wanted to do was get involved with him when he was in that kind of mood. He found your room from there, easy to spot thanks to the rock that was still keeping the door open, but someone had placed a box full of dirt outside your room as well. Well, dirt and—

Mark took a quick step back when he saw the worms squiggling around in the dirt and decided to keep moving. The only problem was that for some reason none of the doors were labeled. Sure, he could tell which one belonged to Wilford thanks to the man’s sense of decoration that extended to the vibrant colors on his door, but the rest were a little harder to identify. The one with the keypad he guessed belonged to the Googles, while the one next door belonged to Bing judging by the stickers that practically covered the door, most of them of memes. He ruled out another door based on the perfume or cologne or hairspray, some kind of extremely strong smell coming out of it anyways, figuring that one belonged to either Yandereplier or Bim.

But there were still four or five without any decoration at all. He knocked at each one, but it wasn’t until the third that he got a reply, from behind him.

“Markiplier knocks at the Jims door, but the twins are busy with a meeting in town.”

“Host,” Mark said, smiling as he spun around. The ego did not return the smile. He just stood there, waiting until Mark asked, “Did you know I was looking for you?”

“Yes, the Host knew. The Host also knew that Markiplier would continue looking for the Host no matter how long the Host avoided him, so the Host came here anyways.” The Host turned and walked away, leaving Mark to follow after.

“Look, Host, I get that you’re upset, but can’t we talk? I—” Mark paused when something moved near your door, leaving a very disturbed box in its wake. “Oh my God, is there actually a badger?”

“The Host has found it best not to question it.” Mark wondered what that was supposed to mean, but the Host did not pause and he had to focus on following him. They went upstairs and he assumed that the ego was headed toward his recording studio.

“The Host already knows why Markiplier is here. He just wants something.”

“Yeah, I just want to talk,” Mark said, trying to ignore the sound the Host made at that. “Come on, why is that so hard to believe?”

“’They are just accidents,’” said the Host, mimicking Mark’s speech pattern as he did so. “That is what Markiplier told Y/N about the egos.”

“You were eavesdropping?” Mark asked. Granted, that shouldn’t have been too surprising since in theory the Host could narrate anything, but he had hoped for some privacy. “What, did that hurt your feelings?”

“Markiplier lied to Y/N,” the Host said, stopping in the middle of the hall. “Markiplier knows exactly why he created us. The doctor, to heal him because he could not go to a normal hospital. The androids, the showman, the salesman, the hero, the student, all served a purpose to Markiplier at one time or another. Just as the Author tried to do and failed.”

“You didn’t fail,” Mark said. “You were an idea I had, and the fans loved you—”

“But the Author could not change Markiplier’s story, even though that was what he was created to do. Just as he could not rewrite Damien or Celine’s story when the Colonel came to him, when he broke him.” The Host’s bandages were beginning to stain even as Mark watched. “Now the Host is just here to serve a different purpose when Markiplier needs him. And when we are not needed, Markiplier forgets us.”

Mark sighed, yours and Amy’s words coming back to haunt him now. “I know I wasn’t around last year, after…You know. But I’m trying now, you can see that, right?”

“The Host can see that Markiplier’s friends try to be a good influence, but that does not change anything. Markiplier does not even know his own egos as well as Y/N, who has only been aware for a few months now, and yet he does not understand why his egos prefer Darkiplier to him.”

This again. Mark crossed his arms and said, “Why? Because you’re all just as messed up as he is, maybe that’s why.”

Well, the plan to reach out to the Host was going well so far.

Mark continued, “You think I haven’t noticed? All of your attempts to take control of my channel, to influence my fans, to—”

“To get attention,” the Host finished for him. “Yes, just as Dark does, although the Host would not say his intentions are the same. The egos need attention, if they are to be remembered, if they are not to disappear. Markiplier is aware of this.”

“I…” Mark trailed off and started again, trying to sound more confident as he said, “I mean, yeah, I make the videos, I drop hints every now and then. What more do you want?”

“Markiplier could do what Dark did and pretend as if he cares. There is a danger in that, of course.”

“I swear, if you’re just building up to a joke about my acting…”

“The danger is that Markiplier might actually start to care.”

Mark stared at the Host, trying to read some sign in the ego’s face that he was joking, but there was nothing there to give away the ego’s thoughts. “Let’s say I agree to spend more time with the egos. Would you be willing to try to find Wilford for us then?”

“…Perhaps.” The Host tilted his head and frowned. “Does Markiplier’s car have an alarm on it?”

“Yeah, why?” Mark asked.

“The car alarm goes off, startling several birds. With each beep it attracts the attention of more of the egos, and while at the moment Darkiplier cannot hear the sound in his office—”

Mark swore and ran to the nearest window, pulling the key chain out of his pocket as he did so. He relaxed when the signal reached, silencing the car alarm before it could get more than two or three beeps out, although he couldn’t see what had set it off in the first place.

“Okay, Host, let’s—” Mark turned and found the hallway behind him empty, the Host nowhere to be seen. “Oh, real cute. Like I can’t find my way out from here.”

He muttered all the way back down the hall and wondered if he had made any headway with the ego. If he could just convince him to try for long enough to get Wilford under control…Markiplier turned the corner and, just as the Host had foreseen, almost walked straight into a group of egos who stared at the sight of him.

A long, long moment of silence followed before Silver Shepherd leaned toward the others and stage whispered, “You guys see him too, right?”

“Well, well, what brings the lovely Markiplier around?” Bim asked, and Mark couldn’t tell how serious the ego was being as he flashed him a smile and added, “Here for another round with Dark maybe?”

“No,” Mark said, and when the green-shirted Google’s eyes started to light up repeated, “No, no, nothing like that. Just here to check in, you know. I, uh, would appreciate it if you didn’t tell him I was here.”

Google tilted his head, whirring as he sized up the man. “One of my objectives is to inform Dark of any intruders.”

“What? I’m not an intruder,” Mark said. “I’m here all the time, you’ve never told on me before.”

Google hesitated. “It is not normally part of my programming to lie to people, but if that is what you want, then no, of course not.”

Behind the three of them, the King of the Squirrels peeked out, his hands behind his back like he was trying to hide something even as he stared curiously at Mark, while Yandereplier didn’t so much as look up from their phone, their eyes narrowing dangerously at something on it. Really not the five Mark would have guessed to be hanging out together.

“Is something going on?” he asked, aware that the Host could be listening. He had to make some kind of effort if he wanted to get the ego on his side. “The, uh, conference room is that way, right? You guys have a meeting?”

“Well,” Silver started, but Bim quickly stepped on his foot and spoke over him.

“We just wanted to round everybody up for breakfast. Chef Iplier really outdid himself this morning and no one should miss out on that.”

Silver whispered something in Bim’s ear, which must have taken a lot of effort considering the way his mask made his lips pucker out, and the two egos brought Google in on the hurried debate that followed.

Meanwhile, Yandere began to curse at their phone, muttering dire threats as they typed away.

“Something wrong?” Mark asked, even though he knew he would regret it.

“_Boobs McKenzie_,” Yan said through gritted teeth, as if that was answer enough.

“…Okay then.” He started to back away, figuring that maybe he could try to appease the Host by connecting with an ego who was a little less bloodthirsty, but the others broke out of their huddle and Silver said, “You want to come to breakfast with us?”

“Wait, that’s what you were whispering about?” Mark asked, trying really hard not to be offended. They had to talk themselves into even inviting him? “…Sure, you know what, why not?”

He followed them back down the hall, letting the egos walk ahead because he definitely didn’t want to have his back to them. However, the King of the Squirrels trailed behind until they were roughly in step, and as they walked Mark noticed that the king was trying to discreetly wipe the dirt off of his hands onto his robes. The king noticed Mark’s stare and put a single finger to his peanut butter covered lips, smiling when Mark nodded.

Silently, Mark wondered what he was getting himself into, and more importantly wondered if it would be worth it to get the Host’s help. Right now, he figured the answer was ‘probably not.’ Too bad he didn’t have any other ideas on how to track down Wilford.


	10. Personal Information

“Wait, information?” You stared at your phone, wondering if there was something wrong with the connection. “What could you possibly want to know that you couldn’t just lookup?”

“Personal information,” Google replied.

“Okay, I’ve seen enough warnings about giving out my personal information online, and I think that applies to android avatars of search engines too.”

“Not that kind of personal information.” Google’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “We are interested in information that Y/N possesses, information of _actual _interest, not Y/N’s birthday.”

Google’s eyes flickered as if he had glanced at something else on his screen and he scowled for a moment before returning his attention to you.

“I don’t see how anything I could tell you would be useful to you,” you pointed out. The last thing you wanted was for Google to get frustrated with your answers and go back on your deal. “Isn’t there anything else you want?”

“We believe that we can find a use,” Google answered. “In exchange for this unit’s service, Y/N will answer four questions honestly and to the best of their ability. Follow up questions will not be counted toward the four unless they go beyond the bounds of the original question.”

“Why four? Isn’t three like the magic number?”

“Four Google units, one question each,” Google said. He smiled to himself and added, “If three is the magical number, then I believe four is the perfect one.”

You thought Google was being just a little bit full of himself but figured that might not be the best thing to point out if you wanted his help. You could try calling Dr. Iplier, but there was every chance Dark had his phone bugged too, and you didn’t know any other way to get in touch with the doctor without waiting until you could finally return to the house. You couldn’t wait that long. “What kind of questions are we talking about here? What if I don’t know the answer?”

“We believe we can find four questions that Y/N can answer. If there is a miscalculation and one is truly beyond Y/N’s capabilities, then we will simply ask another in its place.” Google paused a moment and then asked, “Does Y/N agree to the arrangement?”

You hesitated. You needed to talk to Dr. Iplier without Dark listening in, but you weren’t sure about this. Then again, it wasn’t like you had any embarrassing secrets to hide, at least not any that you can remember in this version of reality.

“Does Y/N agree to the arrangement?” Google asked again, tone unchanging.

“…Fine, four questions,” you said, giving in to your need to know more than anything. “What do you want to know?”

The ‘G’ on Google’s chest lit up again as he connected with his other units. When it finally returned to its normal glow he said, “The first question is this: what happened in Darkiplier’s office 17 days ago?”

“Seven…” Wait, was he talking about when Dark showed you all the photos and papers from the house? “But you were there.”

“I am aware of that. My logs indicate that I was in the room, and that I was in the presence of Y/N and Dark when I went in, and then there is missing data.” Google frowned, a red light appearing in the backs of his eyes. “I do not like incomplete information. So, tell me, what happened in that office?”

Why would Google not remember? He remembered everything, he stored data constantly. That is, unless someone ordered him to delete it.

You didn’t know why Dark would do that, but you saw no reason not to tell him, “Dark wanted to show me some personal things, see if they could stir up any old memories. He asked you to be there because there’s no way I would be in a room alone with him.”

“Tell me about these personal things,” Google said. When you started to protest, he added, “Remember, the agreement was for an honest answer to the best of your ability.”

“…Mostly photographs, of myself and Mark and some of his old friends. There were news clippings too, there was one about a safari hunt and another about the election of a new mayor, but it was mostly reviews of Mark’s old shows. There were copies of criminal records and case notes written by Abe, you know, the Detective?” You paused and hesitated, then, knowing that was enough to give you away, added, “And a black cane with a silver top.”

“And did these have any effect?”

“No, I mean, they didn’t help me remember anything. After that, Dark just asked me a couple of questions about Mark, or about the version of him that I remember and then I left. I can’t tell you what happened after that.”

“The Mark that you remember is different from the current Mark?” Google asked.

“It’s…complicated,” you said. “But yeah, basically I have two sets of memories, one with a different version of Mark, and the one with this Mark that I can’t really remember much of.”

“I doubt your software is efficient enough to handle running parallel versions of the same program without error.”

“Tell me about it,” you muttered. “Wait, what?”

Google hummed as he processed this information and then he said, “That is a suitable response for the first question.”

“That was just the first question?!”

“The second question will come later. It will be safe to make your call in ten minutes.”

“That’s it? You’re not going to ask me anything else now?” you asked. “What’s to stop me from not answering after the call?”

Google smiled, tilting his head down so that his eyes met yours over the top of his glasses. “Would you really take that risk?”

Without waiting for an answer, he added, “There is processing to be done to reach an agreement on the second question. I will be in touch when that happens, but for now everyone is gathering for breakfast, and this unit does not wish to miss the show.”

His face disappeared and your phone went straight back to the lock screen. You could almost see your reflection in it and the current question on your mind: What had you just agreed to?

You checked the time and decided you could deal with that later. Right now, you had a doctor’s appointment to keep.

Although, you did have to wonder what Google meant by “the show.”

Mark had his own concerns as he followed the group of egos into the kitchen, where Chef Iplier was busy tending to the massive stove while the Google with the red shirt, who had donned a floral-print apron for some reason, stood at a distance, occasionally commenting on the oven’s temperature or one of the multiple timers he had running. Both glanced his way, but neither seemed surprised to see him. Then again, the Googles did share information back and forth.

The others took up random seats around the long table, already set with plates and silverware, and after a moment’s hesitation Mark chose a chair at random, realizing only after he sat down that while he had a great view of the window and the door to the backyard, the rest of the house was now behind him. Almost immediately, the King of the Squirrels took the seat beside him, sitting uncomfortably close as he stared out the window. The King began to take fruit from the bowl in the center of the table and stuff it somewhere in his robe almost absentmindedly, sighing as he did so.

“Something wrong?” Mark asked when it became clear that Bim and Silver were deep in their own conversation with the green-shirted Google and Yandereplier was still attached to their phone.

“I’m King of the Squirrels,” the King said, giving him a mournful look.

“Yeah, I know.”

“My people need me, but I only get an hour a day outside now.” The King sighed again, harder this time, and Mark got a good whiff of peanut butter. “It’s not enough time.”

“Hey, at least you get to _go_ outside,” Yandere said, still not looking up from texting. “I’m missing school over this, which is quality Senpai time that I can’t get back.”

“Hold on, what are you talking about?” Mark asked. “Since when can’t you go out?”

“Since Dark said so,” Bim said, joining in on the conversation because he liked to eavesdrop. “No one gets to leave unless they’re helping look for Wilford with his permission, which means my show’s production has taken a dive.”

“My superhero duties count, since, you know, if there’s trouble then there’s a good chance Wilford had something to do with it,” Silver said.

“Then why do you get an hour out?” Mark asked the King. Privately, he thought the less time the egos spent around normal people the better, because it at least meant less havoc and bloodshed all around, but keeping them locked up in the house?

“My subjects are good at keeping tabs on people,” the King said. “I have to get out to get daily reports from them.”

“Plus he bites people if he stays inside too long,” Bim added.

The King smiled. “That too.”

“And…have any of them spotted Wilford?” Mark asked.

The King’s smile faded and he admitted, “Well, you see, squirrels are a bit colorblind, so they have some trouble with the color pink. I tried showing them pictures of Wilford, but people all tend to look the same from up in a tree.”

Mark patted the King on the shoulder and said, “Yeah, well…good effort.”

The King of the Squirrels beamed, but Mark was spared from further conversation when the door to the kitchen banged open.

“I wanna talk about changing groups,” Ed Edgar said, bearing down on Bim and the green Google in particular. “Why did I get stuck with the robuts?”

“Saaah dude!” Bing cried as he entered the room, and both the yellow-shirted Google behind him and the other two Googles in the kitchen groaned, their ‘G’s fading with irritation. “We aren’t late, are we?”

“Why do you care?” asked the yellow Google, with a tone that suggested that at least one circuit had been frayed from spending time with Bing. “You cannot even eat.”

“Sah, don’t be such a buzzkill man! How often do we get together like this anymore?”

“We literally had a meeting yesterday.”

Down at the other end of the table, Mark noticed that Bim was trying to shut Ed Edgar up as quickly as possible. When their eyes met, Bim shot Mark a smile and said to Ed through clenched teeth, “Can’t this wait?”

“I’m just sayin’ it’s not fair is what it is,” Ed said. “Those two can barely stand each other, and with all their beep boopin’ I was ready to shoot both of ’em myself.”

“Shooting Bing would have been sufficient,” the yellow Google said as he tried to get the other search engine to stop leaning on him.

“Aw, you don’t mean that,” Bing said, grinning as he flopped into a chair next to the green Google. “We’re practically brothers, man!”

“So were Cain and Abel,” the green Google pointed out as he moved his chair farther away. “I do not normally take humans as role models, but I am willing to make an exception if you are.”

Bing ignored him and leaned back in his chair, pushing up his sunglasses as he did so. There was a brief surge of static across the lenses and then he asked, “Yo, where is everybody else at?”

“Dark, the Host, and Dr. Iplier will not be joining us,” the blue Google said at the door. “This is everyone who will be attending.”

Mark looked around as the others took the seat and Chef Iplier began to put food out on the table with the assistance of the red Google. Sometimes he forgot just how many egos there were, but even with those three gone he still felt like someone was missing. Or two someones, actually. He vaguely remembered the Host saying something about the Jims going into town and wondered what those two could possibly be doing to help find Wilford besides staying out of Dark’s way.

His stomach grumbled at the smell of the biscuits and gravy currently being passed around the table, and suddenly Mark remembered just how long it had been since he ate. He watched the food go around, but when the King of the Squirrels tried to pass it to him, the red Google swooped in and took the plate. Mark watched in confusion as the Google passed it on to Ed Edgar two seats down until Chef Iplier leaned over his shoulder and put something else on his plate.

“What’s going on?” Mark asked, suddenly realizing that all of the egos were looking at him now, grinning. He looked down at what the chef put on his plate and gave a long, low groan, barely noticing as Chef Iplier filled his glass to the brim with milk.

“Just one won’t kill you,” Bim said while Yandereplier held up their phone to record as if all four Googles and Bing didn’t already have that covered. Silver whispered something about a bet to Ed, and the man nodded and pulled a single twenty out of his pocket and laid it between them.

“I hate every single one of you,” Mark muttered as he stared down at the small pile of ghost peppers on his plate.


	11. Doctor Knows Best

“The Host walks into the infirmary, where the doctor is mopping the floor while dancing to ‘Doctor Doctor’ by UFO, which while on theme is loud enough that Dr. Iplier fails to notice the Host’s presence for an uncomfortably long time.”

Dr. Iplier strummed his hand across his mop as he sang, “Doctor, Doctor, please, I’m going—_Oh, come on!_ Doesn’t anyone knock anymore?”

“The Host did knock,” said the Host as he unerringly walked across the dry part of the infirmary floor to the doctor’s desk. “Dr. Iplier has a request to video chat.”

“I do?” Dr. Iplier leaned his mop against the wall and walked around to check. “You’re right, I must not have heard the notification.”

He turned the music off and sat down in his chair before accepting the invitation. While it connected, the Host pulled up his own chair and sat down next to the doctor.

“Uh, Host? Maybe you should ask before—Hello Henrik!” Dr. Iplier’s smile at the other doctor’s face faded a little when he saw you sitting next to him and the blue folders on the desk. “…Oh.”

“Yes, I think you know vhy ve are calling,” Dr. Schneeplestein said. “Y/N has questions, and while I am 100% qualified doctor, I do not know everything.”

Dr. Iplier glanced at the Host, thinking a little warning would have been nice, but he couldn’t pretend like he hadn’t seen this coming eventually. “Where do you want to start, Y/N?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?” you asked, holding up the folders. “You knew about the mirror, about what Mark did, all of it, and you never said a word!”

“Well, when you first arrived here my main focus was on recovery, and then there was the whole situation with the creepy laughing demon, and then again more focused on whether or not you were dying, and, uh…” Dr. Iplier looked to Schneeps for help and then admitted, “I was kind of…asked not to tell you.”

“Which one?” you asked, trying very hard not to get angry just yet. “Mark or Dark?”

“Both.”

“I should have been allowed to see these months ago, I—There’s notes here about me from when I can’t remember anything. They’re always trying to get me to remember something, then why wouldn’t they let me see this?!”

Dr. Iplier sighed. “I agreed with them, Y/N. Considering the number of traumas you must have endured as the District Attorney, it’s little surprise that you may be repressing the memories much like Wilford does. I thought if you saw the files then it would just open the door for Mark or Dark to try to push you to remember something that you’re not ready to deal with.”

Beside you, Dr. Schneeplestein murmured, “Perhaps this is not the greatest idea. You are becoming upset, Y/N.”

“Yeah, I’m—” You stopped yourself and took a long, steadying breath. It wouldn’t do any good to get mad at the doctors. You understood what Dr. Iplier was getting at, but it still felt like you should have had the choice to see the files. “I’m fine. Sorry. Dr. Iplier, this isn’t really why I wanted to call. Dr. Schneeplestein mentioned that you might know something about what happened last year with the Valentine’s Day project that got canceled.”

“Oh, that?” Dr. Iplier glanced at the Host, who shrugged at the unspoken question.

“Markiplier and Dark told the Host and Dr. Iplier to never tell the other egos, but they never said anything about Y/N.”

That seemed to be enough for the doctor, who said, “The only reason I know is because Mark asked me to be on set and observe your interactions with the others. We hoped that spending more time outside of the mirror and with Mark in particular might help with your memory issues.”

“And because Mark needed someone to hold the camera,” you muttered.

Dr. Iplier nodded encouragingly. “Yes, that’s right. Well, we made it as far as the theater scene. You two walked into the theater alone because they didn’t want anyone else in the shot, and then there was some kind of equipment malfunction, the lights went out, and both of you were gone.”

“That would be when Dark showed up, right?” you asked, rubbing your forehead as you did so. You were afraid you already knew where this was going.

“Yes, apparently, although we didn’t find Markiplier and Dark until after it happened,” said Dr. Iplier. “They had been in some sort of fight and were still arguing even when they told us how you had just disappeared.”

“I…what?”

“Oh, I have a copy of the video!” Dr. Iplier said as he pulled the video up on his screen and dragged it into the viewing area. You had just enough time to see someone (probably the doctor), had titled the video “Chica’s First Date” before he pressed play.

And there it was, just like in A Date with Markiplier: Mark and Dark fighting each other with bags over their heads like the dorks they were until one of them pulled a gun and it went skittering across the ground to land at your feet.

Only this time, when the camera tilted down toward the gun, you stepped back instead of picking it up. You could see your own hands trembling as you wrapped them around yourself, and knew: you remembered, on some level even then you remembered the gun pointed at you, the accidental shot, the fall. Even now you had to fight to ignore the tremor that ran up your arm as you watched the camera look up to see both men still fighting, and then suddenly turn right.

There was a man standing there who hadn’t been there a second ago. He held a single finger up to his pink mustache and winked at you with one bright pink eye before the camera hit the ground, its new angle showing Chica panting as she looked around, clearly confused by her change in location.

“Wait, what just—” you started, but the other three shushed you in time to hear Mark say, “What the hell?” followed by Dark politely but firmly telling Chica to keep her paws off his suit. Their arguing was muffled, but you could hear Mark calling your name as Dark appeared one last time in the shot, picking up the camera before the video cut out.

“Naturally, my first guess was that Wilford turned you into Chica,” Dr. Iplier said in the silence that followed. “I’ll admit it was a bit farfetched for a theory, but Dark really didn’t have to slap me when I said it.”

“No, I zhink he vas correct in ze slapping,” Schneeplestein said. “So Wilford, he took Y/N somevhere else and left Chica in zheir place?”

“Well, if you want to go with everyone else’s _boring_ theory, then yes,” Dr. Iplier muttered, crossing his arms over his chest.

“No,” the Host said. “Not Wilford.”

“His eyes,” you added. “They were pink, like yesterday when he remembered.”

You waited, and when the doctor failed to continue, you asked, “So, where did you find us?”

“Oh? No, we didn’t find you,” Dr. Iplier said. He shrugged. “You just returned to the mirror shard a few hours later like you always did when you ran out of energy, and Wilford showed up the next day with no clue where he’d been, which is normal after one of his episodes. We still have no idea where you two went or what happened.”

“What? But didn’t you ask me—” You stopped, the answer coming before you even finished the question. Of course they asked you, but according to the doctor’s notes you barely remembered anything from one time out of the mirror to the next.

“You were so tired that it was days before you even woke up again,” Dr. Iplier explained. “Although that’s probably for the best, considering how bad things got between the three of them during that time.”

He shuddered and you saw the Host place a comforting hand on the doctor’s arm.

“Host, do you know?” you asked.

“The Host was the Author then,” the Host pointed out. “Even looking back, the Host cannot see where Wilford and Y/N went. Dark has tried to get the Host to see multiple times now.”

What did the Colonel want with you then? Where would he have taken you? You felt uneasy at the gap in your memory, more than you ever had before. The District Attorney’s memories were one thing, but this felt closer, maybe because it was more recent, or maybe because the Colonel was back and now you were starting to see why Mark and Dark were so sure he would go after you in particular. All three of you had been there in that video, but he took you. And then the next time the Colonel reappeared, he went for the Author…

“But why didn’t they just tell me?” you asked again, knowing the others couldn’t really answer that.

“They didn’t tell anyone,” Dr. Iplier said. “The other egos don’t know either. They didn’t even know of your existence until the night you arrived here, and of course they still don’t know about your relationship with Dark and Mark.”

“But they know Wilford sometimes has…relapses, right?” you asked, to keep your mind off of the fact that at least one other ego had some idea about that. Then again, why shouldn’t you tell Google or any of the other egos? Why did Mark and Dark get to decide who knew?

“Yes, they’ve seen some of them,” Dr. Iplier said. He rubbed the back of his neck and admitted, “But…they may not know how severe these episodes can become. After all, Dark has avoided telling them about the Valentine’s day thing, or what happened to the Author.”

“What?” You looked from him to the Host, sure that you misunderstood. “Then what do they think happened to you?”

“The Author disappeared, and by the time he could leave the infirmary, he was introduced to the others as the Host,” said the Host in a flat, even tone as if he were narrating the weather. “Some of the egos have made the connection between the Author and the Host, but not all of them. The Host has been forbidden from speaking of the matter just as Dr. Iplier has.”

You sat there in silence, letting it sink in before you finally came to the conclusion, “That’s it, I’m going to kill them. The next time I see Mark and Dark, they are both dead.”

“As a doctor, I cannot recommend zat,” Dr. Schneeplestein said, but he was quick to follow up with, “However, Jackieboy Man knows many fighting moves he would gladly teach you for ze justice.”

“While the Host appreciates Y/N’s enthusiasm, he must remind them to maintain caution with—”

The Host stopped mid sentence and both he and Dr. Iplier turned at some sound that the computer speakers could barely pick up. Yelling, maybe? You definitely heard a crash like something just broke.

“We need to go,” Dr. Iplier said, barely taking the time to say, “Goodbye Y/N, Henrik, we’ll, uh…Be in touch,” before cutting off the call.

You stared at Dr. Schneeplestein’s background, a mix of fanart of himself, and tried to let all of that sink in while you wondered what was going on over at the Iplier house.

Dr. Schneeplestein, on the other hand, grinned and said, “I think that vent vell, how about you?”

He looked closer at you and said, “Or maybe now is ze time for drinking? Or perhaps a hug?”

You thought you would take him up on the second offer first and let him pull you into a tight, warm hug. It wasn’t enough to fix anything, but it still helped.


	12. Chocolate vs. Vanilla

“Nope,” Mark said, pushing the plate of ghost peppers away. “For my fans, sure, but I’m not about to put myself through that torture for you people.”

“Aw, well, if you’re scared…” Silver said, and more than one of the other egos snickered.

“I’m not scared, I’m just not an idiot,” Mark said. “What makes you think I’m going to eat one of these?”

“Perhaps because you do not wish for a video to go up on your channel titled ‘Markiplier is a Big Bubble-Blowing Baby’?” Google suggested.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Dude, I’ve already got some ideas for the edits,” Bing said, sounding even more excited now. “Photoshop your head on a baby for the title card, won’t even take two minutes!”

“Well lookit that, we’ve got your video of the day all sorted out then,” Ed Edgar said. “That’d make your fans right happy I expect, considering you’ve been too busy lately to keep to schedule.”

Mark sighed. He knew the egos would do it, too, and the last thing he wanted was to try to explain that one to his fans on top of his erratic schedule while looking for Wilford. “…Fine. One.”

He picked one up, aware of all the eyes on him as he bit down and felt the pepper burst in his mouth. He barely had time to swallow before the gagging started. “Oh God—hrgh!”

“I’s no’…kh…Shu’ up!” Mark tried to tough it out while the egos all laughed at his sweating, snotty face, but then he gave in and snatched up the napkin next to his plate, trying desperately to wipe off the remains of the pepper before he took a huge gulp of milk. It only did so much to stop the burning, and his tongue felt swollen to the point talking was difficult. “’Appy now?”

“Pft, talk about babies, I bet these things ain’t even that hot,” Ed Edgar said and without hesitation he picked one of the peppers off of Mark’s plate and popped it into his mouth. “See, wha’d I—”

Ed coughed and sputtered and pulled his hat off to wave it at his mouth like that would do any good. “Hoo boy, those things got some kick to ‘em!”

The King of the Squirrels reached out for one of the peppers but Mark slapped his hand away with a firm, “No,” followed by, “Hey, get your own milk!”

He grabbed the glass from Ed and downed another huge gulp. Only another 32 of these and he might feel like his mouth wasn’t on fire anymore.

While Chef Iplier came to Ed’s rescue with a fresh glass, Silver reached out and slowly slid the twenty Ed put down as a bet into his pocket.

“Why did you even have these things?” Mark asked, rubbing at his tongue with the napkin again to see if that helped any.

Chef Iplier shrugged in response and popped one of the peppers in his mouth. Everyone in the room watched, but he just returned to bringing more food to the table like it was nothing. It didn’t even look like he broke a sweat when he took away the rest of the ghost peppers and let Mark have some real food.

“…Huh. Well, okay then,” Mark said, deciding at this point he just shouldn’t question it. He noticed that Bing and Google were comparing shots of Mark and Ed eating the peppers and asked, “What are you going to do with that?”

“I plan on permanently storing this in my memory banks and watching it as often as I can,” Google said, all four smiling in unison.

“Sah, dude, I have some sick edits I can do—” Bing started.

“Delete it,” Mark said.

Google’s smile did not so much as flicker as the blue-shirted one answered, “Access denied.”

“What? Since when?”

“Since you forgot your password and said, ‘Screw it, I’ll do it later’,” Google answered. “If you would like to start the password recovery process, it should only take…71 hours.”

“Screw it, I’ll do it later,” Mark muttered, figuring the effort wouldn’t be worth it for a video that wasn’t even half as embarrassing as the ones he made himself. “Whose idea was this, anyways?”

The egos all exchanged glances and Mark realized he wasn’t about to get the answer to that one, especially when the King asked, “How’s Chica been doing?”

If it came from anyone else, Mark might have thought he was trying to change the subject, but the King genuinely fawned over the pictures Mark showed him on his phone until Google lost patience and said, “Just give me the phone already.”

A second later the android was projecting a video Mark had taken of Chica running around the dog park over the table to the collective “aw”s of everyone there. The egos were based off of Mark after all, and if there was one thing he couldn’t say no to it was a cute pupper like Chica.

“Will you bring her the next time you come by?” Yandereplier asked. They had actually put their phone down for this, which meant they were willing to risk missing a Senpai-related update the second it happened. “You never bring her here anymore.”

“Uh, sure, I guess I can,” Mark said as he took his phone back from Google. “She’d love it.”

“Is she with Y/N now?” Bim asked.

The question sounded innocent enough, but Mark lied and said, “Yeah, those two love each other. Amy was talking about taking them to the beach sometime.”

And she _had_ talked about it, before Wilford went running off. Still, Mark saw the look that went around the table along with a dip in the noise level. They knew it was a lie. Had Dark told them? He felt a rush of anger toward him even as he braced himself for the calling-out and questions. They’d _agreed_ not to say anything, not until they tracked down Wilford at least, but now he was the bad guy for lying—

Except no one said anything. Instead, Bim launched into a story about how he was tapped to be the host for a dog show and proceeded to tell them about the rehearsal and how it ended with him no longer being allowed in the city of Pasadena. As Ed decided to follow that story up with how he lost out on a business venture because he forgot Arizona was a state, Mark slowly relaxed and was surprised to find himself laughing along with the others. Maybe he was just being paranoid, with everything else going on. Breakfast passed easily, and the King of the Squirrels was in the middle of a very detailed story about two of his squirrels who, he claimed, found a door to a magical land which began to sound more and more like Target when he stopped short.

The other egos had stopped laughing and chatting as well, and it was only in the silence that followed that Mark noticed the ringing.

“So, who wants to explain what is going on here?” Dark asked, his voice distorting with barely concealed anger.

Mark turned and found the glare directed straight at him even as the King shakily answered, “Breakfast…Would you—”

The King fell silent when Dark’s eyes darted toward him before returning to Mark’s face. “What are you doing here?”

“I just came to check in,” Mark said, standing up to meet Dark as he approached the table. “It’s been a while.”

“For good reason,” Dark said. His aura had spread out from his body with each step until when he stopped a few feet away Mark could still feel it pressing down. “Google, Bing, why aren’t you searching for Wilford?”

“Sah, dude, got it running in the background, see?” Bing said, flashing up a screen of code that was running too fast for human eyes to read. The Googles on either side of Bing had the presence of mind to distract the android before he could say anything else, and the blue-shirted Google added, “We are running at peak efficiency. These…interactions are hardly taxing our resources.”

“Maybe if that were true one of you could have told me where Wilford was yesterday _before_ he had already left,” Dark said, and all five androids avoided meeting his gaze. “I don’t really care what the rest of you do, but if any of you—”

He paused to look at Mark.

“—Get in the way of finding Wilford, then you will have to answer to me. Is that understood?”

Mark glanced around and saw the egos nodding, too cowed to even say anything. Before he could speak, Dark stepped close and spoke quietly.

“We will talk in the hall.”

Mark felt a flash of anger as he brushed past Dark and walked out of the kitchen. He definitely didn’t slow down in the hall as he walked straight for the front door. He wasn’t about to deal with Dark on one of his power trips, especially if he thought he could order him around.

He didn’t expect the hand that grabbed his shoulder and slammed him into the wall, pressing his face into the plaster as Dark whispered in his ear, “_**I said**_, we are going to have a talk.”

Mark elbowed Dark in the ribs and immediately backed two steps away from him. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“I’m not the one wasting time,” Dark said, glowering as he advanced and Mark continued to back away. “Wilford is still missing, and what do I find you doing? Eating and chatting about squirrels with a room full of yourself like the simple-minded, egotistical, worthless man that you are.”

“And what have you been doing? Locking the egos up in the house and hoping two search engines can find him?” Mark laughed. “Please, if anyone is going to find him, it’s going to be you or me. Who else knows him better? But here you are, hiding away and letting someone else do the work for you like always.”

“I have my own…methods of searching.”

“And clearly they’re working so well,” Mark said sarcastically. “Hey, who knows, maybe Wilford’s wised up and realized he’s better off without you or any—”

Stars flashed in Mark’s eyes when Dark slammed him up against the wall again, using his arm to pin the man as he growled and said, “That is enough out of you.”

Mark struggled, but it felt more like Dark let him go as he freed himself and backed away from the figure whose aura split, revealing a screaming, howling side of him that disappeared in an instant and left Dark standing there, flexing his hands as he stared at them until he looked up at Mark with a new look in his eyes.

“You know,” Dark said as he approached Mark, who back away until he reached a table in the hall and picked up the homemade vase on it, “I’ve had this question on my mind since the house burned down.”

Dark raised an arm and didn’t so much as flinch when the vase shattered against it. Mark was already sprinting down the hall, but Dark vanished and reappeared in front of him, this time his hands around his throat as he asked, “Do you think burning down the house lifted the curse on you and your pathetic guests?”

Dark tightened his grip and added softly, watching Mark struggle and claw at the hands blocking his air, “And if so, then does that mean you can finally die?”

Mark’s vision swam as pain thundered through his head. He was panicking with each failed breath, unable to think or concentrate on Dark’s words. The ringing was filling his ears now, pounding down with each heartbeat as he choked.

And then there was air.

Mark gasped and wheezed, almost sick as someone else took him by the shoulders, supporting him when his own legs tried to crumple beneath him. He got a dizzying glimpse of Dr. Iplier shining a light in his face and gradually he could hear Dark’s voice again, growling and yelling as others tried to speak.

When Mark finally looked, he saw the blue-shirted Google and Bing each holding an arm and the King of the Squirrels practically hanging off of Dark as all three tried to hold him still. The other egos crowded the hall behind him, watching with varying shades of fear as Dark struggled and hurled insults at them. All three together could barely hold him, and sparks were already starting to fly from one of Google’s arms from the strain.

“You…you…” Mark tried and wheezed, but the doctor thumped him on the shoulder in what was probably meant to be a friendly gesture. They’d saved him.

“If Markiplier dies, then the egos die with him,” the Host said, and suddenly Mark didn’t feel quite as warm and fuzzy as he had a second ago. But the Host was speaking to Dark, his bandaged eyes on him as he added, “Dark is aware of this. Would Dark risk losing us as well as Wilford?”

Dark stilled, his breath almost as ragged with struggling as Mark’s, his jacket open and his hair even more tousled than usual. He looked unkempt compared to his normal, careful appearance, and Mark noticed that the dark circles around his eyes were move vivid than ever, and his aura seemed more frayed than usual, the reds and blues easier to pick out and separate from the rest of the darkness.

“No, of course not,” Dark said, still managing to sound as smooth and easy as he wanted. “I take care of what’s mine, you all know that.”

Google and Bing both hesitated, and before the Host could give a warning Dark was free, leaving both androids on their knees and the king flat on his back as he brushed past the Host. When the doctor tried to intervene, a single blow from Dark knocked him down, freeing him to pin Mark again as he said, “That’s why I won’t kill him.”

“What?” Mark was confused until he saw Dark’s aura spreading around them, making it difficult to even see the others. “No!”

“I’ll just…put him away for a while,” Dark said, smiling.

“You can’t…” Mark wheezed, the words barely making it out as both of his hands fought Dark’s grip around his neck.

Dark’s aura stopped its progress and he said, “You know what? You’re right, what was I thinking?”

He used his free hand to pull the phone out of Mark’s pocket, keeping his grip on Mark’s throat as he held the home button and said, “Call Amy.”

“Ngh.” Mark couldn’t even get a sound out as Dark pressed just that much harder, and he could only listen as Dark spoke with Mark’s tone of voice, his usual echo and distortion gone.

“Hey, Amy! Yeah, I’m still at the house. Look, the Host thinks he knows where Wilford might go next, but it looks like I might be out of town for a couple of days. Do you mind taking care of Chica? …Thank you!” Dark paused and, with a wink at Mark, added, “Love you too! Bye-bye!”

Dark eased up his grip as he ended the call and put the phone into his own pocket, enough that Mark could breathe again so that the spots stopped swirling around his eyes. Before Mark could finish saying, “You son of a—” Dark’s aura spread and enveloped him.

Dark flexed his empty hands. He could sense Mark, alone in his dimension, and he mused aloud to himself, “I keep telling them this would be so much easier if they would just stop struggling.”

Dark turned to face the others, feeling a sense of satisfaction at the looks on all of their faces as he walked over to the Host and carefully brushed some dust off of the ego’s shoulder.

“I take care of what’s mine,” Dark said as he straightened the Host’s jacket. “So, if you want Mark back, then you’ll help return what belongs to me.”

He placed his hands on the Host’s shaking shoulders and asked, “Now are you ready to tell me how to find the Colonel?”


	13. A Day Out

When Dr. Schneeplestein caught you leaving Mark a very angry voice message, he suggested that maybe some fresh air would do you some good. Considering this wasn’t the first message you left Mark (seriously, why wasn’t he picking up?), you decided to take him up on that offer and you were soon joined by Jackieboy Man and Chase.

“Oooh, you’ll love Brighton,” Jackieboy told you as he checked himself in the mirror. He had put on some regular clothes, but you noticed the red hood hanging out over his jacket and his blue mask poking out of his chest pocket. He ran a hand through his green hair and tried to get it to behave as he asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to come, Henrik?”

“I am a very busy doctor, I have much to do,” Dr. Schneeplestein said. “…Plus ze pollen makes me very sneezy.”

“Dude, they make medicine for that,” Chase said, but the doctor just shot him a dirty look. “Fine, whatever. What about the others?”

“Marvin’s practicing for his show,” you answered. You had tried knocking on his door, but Dr. Schneeplestein pulled you away when you both heard him yelling about a missing card and tearing his room apart by the sound of it.

“Hey, JJ!” Jackieboy yelled, and a second later Jameson poked his head around the corner. “Want to come into town with us?”

Jameson hesitated and then nodded, popping away for a moment before returning with a jacket that matched the rest of his dapper appearance, passing the doctor on his way back to the infirmary as he did so.

It looked like the three of them were ready to go, but before you left you thought it might be a good idea to go ahead and ask, “Uh, you guys going out together, does that ever cause any…problems?”

“What do you mean?” Jackieboy asked.

“It’s just, you kind of all…look like Jack. And each other.”

“What?” Jackieboy asked and Chase actually laughed. “We’re completely different!”

Well, sure, Jackieboy still had his green hair, and Jameson was already gesturing to his mustache like that solved everything, and Chase…

“When did you dye your hair back?” you asked.

“Hm?” Chase gave you a clueless smile.

“Last night your hair was green,” you pointed out. “I mean it looks great, I was just a little surprised.”

Especially since he now looked so much like regular Jack that you had almost called him by the wrong name before Schneeplestein greeted him.

“Ah, yeah, fans,” Chase said, still smiling like that explained everything. “You know how it is.”

Jackieboy pouted at his reflection for a second before he said, “Well, we’ve never had a problem going out before. Come on, let’s get going already!”

While the Iplier house felt like it was off on its own and isolated, the Septic egos’ house was right in the middle of the city, pressed up against other buildings in a way that made it seem much smaller on the outside.

“Make sure you stick with us,” Chase said as Jackieboy locked the door. “This place can be a little hard to find again if you’re not used to it.”

Like you had a chance of losing these three in a crowd. They stuck out like a sore thumb walking down the street and in the shops, even in the arcade on the beach with all of its noise and dim lights you could still pick them out at any given moment. Which is what made it all the stranger that no one so much as gave the egos a second glance, except for a couple of kids outside the arcade who wanted Chase’s, not Jack’s, autograph. Apparently, they were huge fans of Bro Average, and you could tell from Chase’s giddy reaction that this wasn’t an everyday thing.

You smiled as you watched Jackieboy take their picture for them and pulled out your own phone. No calls, no messages. You slipped away, and when Jameson found you around the corner a minute later he gestured at the phone in your hand.

“Just call me back, okay?” you said, hanging up on Mark’s voicemail. You avoided looking at Jameson as you explained, “Sorry, I…”

Jameson shrugged, palms up as if to say it wasn’t any concern of his. But then just as quickly he plucked the phone from your hand and turned it off with a wink.

“Yeah, I get it,” you muttered, but then Jameson was pulling you back toward the others, one hand on his hat to keep it from blowing off in the sharp wind coming in over the water.

You thought it might have been his idea to go to the aquarium, but Chase and Jackieboy were just as excited to roam the huge halls and take in all of the sea creatures swimming just beyond the glass.

“Ah, look at these!” Chase said, pulling Jameson in and pointing out the tiny seahorses wrapped around the bottoms of plants, rocking back and forth with the motion of the water.

“Do you guys come here often?” you asked Jackieboy as you walked through the tunnel that ran beneath one of the tanks. The light was dim here, most of it filtering in through the water overhead, and you both stopped to watch as a huge green sea turtle lazily swam by, so close you could see every line in its shell.

“Not really, no,” Jackieboy admitted. “It’s close by, but we’re usually so busy we just don’t make the time. We try to take Jameson out every now and then, but he still gets a little overwhelmed sometimes. He’s had to adjust to a lot since last Halloween.”

Last Halloween. Right, that would have been Jameson’s debut video, after all.

Remembering your last conversation with Mark, you asked, “What happens when a new ego is created? Do you just…show up?”

“Pretty much.” Jackieboy rubbed the back of his head and laughed. “It’s kind of weird when you put it like that.”

He watched a school of fish swim by, but in the glass you could see his reflection staring back at himself, his smile almost sad.

“We have memories, of before. It’s felt like I’ve always protected my city, been a hero, even though I remember my first day too. I don’t know which of us was more surprised, me or Jack. It’s the same with the others. Henrik can tell you all about his medical training, and Chase has Stacy and the kids. They’re real enough to us, I guess.” Jackieboy fell silent and you both watched a shark swim by, massive and completely unconcerned about the other fish darting out of its path before he said, “And then there’s Jameson. His very first video was with _him_, and on top of that he’s had to readjust to the modern world.”

You both turned at a shout and saw Jameson grinning as Chase backed away from a fish that seemed to have taken an interest in him, following his progress along the tunnel on the other side of the glass.

“He looks pretty happy,” you pointed out. “You’ve been taking good care of him if that’s the case.”

“Hey, we’re brothers. We’re here for each other, and for Jack when he needs us too.” Jackieboy’s smile seemed more genuine, more playful as he added, “Almost sounds like a real superhero, huh?”

“That’s because you _are_ a real superhero, you goober!”

“Shush!” Jackieboy waved his hands and checked to make sure no one overheard you, making even more noise in the process. “My secret identity, remember?!”

After the aquarium, the four of you took a walk along the beach. Even though the water was still cold it felt good to let it splash over your feet and even Jameson took off his shoes and rolled his pants legs up. When the wind took his hat you both went running after it as it tumbled over the rocks and startled some birds.

“Got it!” you yelled as you finally snagged the bowler hat, but when you handed it to him he grinned and pushed it down on your head, the brim covering your eyes. “Hey!”

When you pulled the hat back up, you saw the sun setting, turning the water and sky into pale shades of pink, the clouds so beautiful that they hardly seemed real.

The moment wasn’t even ruined when Chase accidentally tackled you running away from Jackieboy and sent you both crashing into the water, although you did have to splash him for it. With you two soaking wet, it was a cold, damp walk home. Maybe it was because it was dark, but it seemed like the egos led you to an entirely different street. The buildings on either side of the house didn’t even look familiar, but when Jackieboy opened the door the light that spilled out of the house was bright and inviting.

Jameson returned your phone to you with a rueful smile, but it wasn’t until after you showered and changed into some dry clothes that you bothered to turn it on. You barely had time to register a missed call from Abe before the screen switched to video and the red-shirted Google glared down at you.

“Y/N. Your phone was turned off.”

“Hi, Google,” you said. “Yeah, I was out—”

“Unimportant. It’s time for the second question.”

“Uh, sure,” you said, thinking that this Google seemed less talkative than the blue one, if that was even possible. “What do you want to know?”

“What is the relationship between Markiplier and Darkiplier?”

“How should I know?” you asked. “If you’re looking for slash fic material, maybe you should check out Tumblr.”

Google’s eyes turned red, but you saw his glare dart at something off-screen before he said, “Y/N, our agreement. You must answer, honestly and completely.”

You sighed, crossing your free arm across your chest as you did so. How were you even supposed to start to explain that mess?

“A long time ago, Mark…made a lot of mistakes. He was angry and hurt and under a really bad influence, and he wound up hurting a lot of people because of it, including his friends. Dark was…he is…”

You hesitated, remembering the moment when you woke up after the fall, Damien and Celine’s words still in your head. Your body, moving on its own to the mirror, where someone else looked back at you. Where he left you.

“Dark is what happens when something evil takes broken and hurt people and forces them into something they don’t belong in, just a bunch of anger and pain and revenge pretending to be a person,” you said, and even Google seemed a little surprised by the anger behind your words. “Mark made…No, we all made Dark that weekend, I guess.”

“The weekend following the poker party as re-enacted in the Who Killed Markiplier videos.”

“Yeah, that’s…” You paused, staring at Google. “That’s right.”

“Those events were real, meaning that Darkiplier and Wilford Warfstache are not egos like the rest of us?”

“Well, no, not really,” you admitted. “Google, if you already know this, why are you asking me?”

“A confirmation was needed,” Google said. “Once this information is processed, you may expect the third question.”

The call ended and you sighed, wondering again just what Google planned to do with this information. “Goodbye to you too.”

As soon as the call ended, the red-shirted Google glanced at Chef Iplier and Ed Edgar, who were washing dishes in the kitchen while the King of the Squirrels sat on the counter, his robe pulled in around him like a security blanket, before he asked, “Did everyone hear that?”

“Loud and clear here,” Silver Shepherd said up in the conference room, where he and Bing were balling up old papers and tossing them into the wastebasket in the corner while the green-shirted Google kept score. With the open line between the Googles, everyone with a Google could hear what you said.

In the Host’s library, a holdover from when he was still the Author, the yellow-shirted Google watched Yandereplier doodle on some homework while Bim examined the shelves and asked, “Should we have told Y/N? They might be able to help.”

In the infirmary, Dr. Iplier used a tool to carefully move one of the wires in the exposed components on the blue-shirted Google’s arm. It was important that the egos worked on something else in case Dark bothered to ask the Host what they were doing. Not that anyone had seen either of them since they disappeared into Dark’s office. The doctor glanced at Google, who shook his head in silent response. He couldn’t tell you even if he wanted to, it would violate the directive Mark and Dark put in him to keep you safe; after all, previous observation showed that if you knew, nothing would stop you from getting involved.

“As long as Dark is interested in Y/N’s well-being, they will be more use to us outside of his reach,” Google said. He closed his eyes as Dr. Iplier reattached a wire and added, his message being relayed to all of the other egos, “Darkiplier is a virus in this house, _our_ house. It is up to us to stop it before it spreads.”


	14. Back to You, Jim

Still trying to figure out what was going on with Google’s weird questions, you called Abe back, wondering why he didn’t leave a message this time. The phone barely rang once before the Detective answered.

“Partner! Where have you been?”

“I was—”

“Great, great,” Abe said without listening. “About earlier, I might have been a little too quick to call you, Partner.”

“Why _did_ you call me?”

“Thought I had a lead on the Colonel and I wanted to share it with you,” Abe said and sighed. “Turns out it wasn’t the lead I thought it was.”

You sat down on the edge of your bed and said, “Okay, tell me what happened.”

The Detective hesitated for a long time, and if you didn’t know any better you might have thought he was embarrassed when he asked, “Do you know those guys from Jim News?”

“You mean Jim and Jim? Sure, they—” And then it clicked and you had to try very hard not to laugh. “They were your leads?”

“They made it sound like some incredible, secret video of the Colonel,” Abe said defensively. “I thought it would show us where he’s hiding, but then it turned out to just be some shaky cam footage of you two from over a year ago—”

And suddenly you weren’t laughing anymore. “What did you just say?”

“I said it was completely useless! I tried to get more out of them, but Jim and Jim just kept talking nonsense, and then suddenly they said they had to go and just ran off on me.”

The Detective sounded like he was ready to vent for a while, but you had to cut him off before he could really get going and asked, “Do you have a copy of the video? Can I see it?”

“Yeah, of course I kept a copy, but I don’t know what good it would do you.”

“Abe, please, could you send me a copy, or just let me see it, please?” You were standing up and pacing now.

“Can your phone do that facetime thing?” Abe asked.

A few seconds later and you were watching your screen as Abe tried to hold the phone and put the DVD in the player at the same time. The camera was shaking all over the place, and when Abe finally got the video started you had to remind him to switch the camera around so you could see the TV screen as well.

Jim filled the screen and then pulled back, directing the camera toward a set of tables beside what looked to be some kind of restaurant or café maybe, you couldn’t see the sign for the place.

“There he is, Jim! The man of the hour everyone is searching for, hiding out here in this den of horrors,” Jim said quietly, pulling the cameraman back into hiding around the corner as a woman walked out of the front of the place with her two kids. He held a hand to his lips, watching until they were out of sight before he continued, “Who knows what kind of sordid activity goes on in this place that would draw this madman here? Is it a front for some sinister underground gambling ring, where players bet their very lives?”

Jim checked to make sure the coast was clear and whispered, “Come on Jim, let’s take a closer look!”

They scurried forward, darting around trashcans and a bench until they were hiding behind a parked car where the cameraman leaned out to get another shot of the man sitting at one of the tables. You could clearly see Wilford Warfstache, even hear his deep laugh as he spoke animatedly, but you couldn’t hear a word he said to the other person sitting at the table. This far away, you couldn’t make out what color his eyes were and the murmur of his voice could have been that of the Colonel or Wilford.

“We found him, Jim,” Jim said, peeking out as well in between speaking directly to the camera. “But why here? Why this clandestine meeting with some mysterious stranger? Is it yet another one of Warfstache’s affairs? Or perhaps, something more _sinister_?”

The cameraman pulled back as Wilford suddenly stood, and then both Jims leaned to watch as he walked over to the open window of the building. While he talked to the man behind the counter, Jim continued to theorize but you started to drown him out as you stared at the other person sitting at the table.

Even from this angle, you recognized yourself, sitting there with your hands gripping each other as you looked from them to Wilford. Suddenly, you moved, picking up something and leaning over the table as if you were writing or carving something into the surface of the wood.

The next time the Jims leaned out, Wilford had turned around and was looking directly at them.

“Go Jim, go!” Jim said, pulling his brother along as they ran away before the video cut on what looked suspiciously like a shot of Jim’s groin.

“That’s all there is,” Abe said, turning the TV off before he switched the camera around so you were looking at each other. “You okay, Partner?”

“Yeah, I…I just don’t remember any of that,” you admitted. If this was from last year, then it was during the time after the Colonel took you. It felt like so much just to see this, but now you had even more questions.

“Right, your memory problems.” Abe studied your face for a moment before he narrowed his eyes and asked one question that definitely hadn’t crossed your mind, “You and the Colonel never…you don’t have a thing going on, do you?”

“What? No!” You stared at the Detective and repeated, “No!”

“Because I’ve lost four partners who got involved with suspects, and he does have a way with people,” Abe said. “Handsome devil, too.”

“He’s not a suspect and I’m just trying to find a _friend_ here,” you said, very sure you were not about to have this conversation. “Why didn’t the Jims show this to Mark or Dark?”

“They told me they tried to, but they were ignored.” The Detective shrugged. “Can you blame them? I mean, when have these two _ever_ found anything useful?”

That didn’t stop Abe from checking out their story, you thought to yourself as you asked, “Did the Jims say where this was?”

“Are you kidding? I don’t even think they know where they are half the time.” Abe considered for a moment and then added, “It did kind of look familiar though. Bet I can track the place down if they haven’t torn it down to build another Starbucks since last year. But again, this is from over a year ago. How’s it supposed to help you now?”

“I’m not sure,” you said, but you were thinking about what you were doing in the video. Were you trying to write some kind of message? What was going through your head then? Did you even remember the Colonel, or know who Wilford was back then? “But it might help me remember something.”

“I’m on it, Partner,” he said with a wink, and suddenly you were the one studying his face and narrowing your own eyes. “…What?”

“When’s the last time you slept?” you asked.

You saw the momentary panic before he said, “Look, missing one night of sleep isn’t about to kill me.”

“Except it’s been more than one night. I know you didn’t sleep last night, and yesterday when I called to tell you about Wilford you were on a case, and you never sleep on a case,” you pointed out. You found out that last part the hard way, after Abe called you to have somebody to talk through one of his cases with and kept you on the phone all night until he suddenly realized the sister did it. Or maybe it was the brother-in-law. Anyways, you had to ask, “So how long has it been since you slept?”

Abe muttered an answer and you groaned.

“Go to bed, Abe!”

“Yeah, yeah, sure thing, Partner,” Abe grumbled until he saw the look you gave him. “I’ll try, alright?”

“Get some sleep before you call me again, got it?” you said, a bit softer this time. “Good night, Detective.”

“Bye Partner,” he said, giving you another wink before he ended the call.

Of course, after talking to Google and the Detective, you weren’t having much luck going to sleep yourself. When Jameson caught you in the living room a few hours later, you thought it was your turn to be told off and told to go to bed but after he recovered from his surprise he smiled and motioned for you to wait, like you were about to go anywhere.

A minute later he returned to the living room with a large metal case in his arms. As you watched he opened it up to reveal it was a portable record player, an old one.

“Is this yours?” you asked and he nodded enthusiastically before carefully taking a record out of one of the pockets on the upper lid and placing it on the turntable. You didn’t recognize the name of the song on the label, and when he put the needle down the music was only familiar to you in a distant, “you’d heard similar styles” kind of way.

He held a hand out to you with a wink as the music played. _“Well, what do you say?”_

You blinked and the speech slide faded, leaving him standing there. “I’m not much of a dancer…”

And more importantly there was every chance of one of the other egos walking in on you, but he waited patiently until you gave in and nodded, letting him show you where to place your hands and lead you in a slow waltz. When you glanced down at your feet, Jameson snapped his fingers and pointed at his eyes, the message clear enough without a speech slide.

_“Keep your eyes on me, don’t look down.”_

_But this close it was hard to meet the brown eyes staring back at you for very long before you were looking away again._

_“Do you really need me for this?” you asked, probably not for the first time._

_“Well, I can’t exactly practice for tomorrow by myself,” he said, chuckling as he led you through the steps. “Besides, what are you going to do when someone asks you to dance?”_

_“Luckily, I don’t have to worry about that,” you said, giving him a cheeky smile. “Tomorrow’s your big day, not mine, so I can sit out all the dances I want to.”_

_“Hm.” You couldn’t tell if it was a laugh or not, especially when he added, “Then I’m a luckier man than I thought.” _

_“What’s that supposed to mean?” you asked and this time he genuinely laughed. It was a louder, fuller sound than the one you heard across the crowded room the next day as he stood in the middle of a group of people all trying to congratulate him and get a word in with him over the next. You wondered why he’d been so concerned about dancing when he didn’t even have the space to breathe before someone else was shaking his hand and introducing themselves. He was still deep in conversation when the song from yesterday came on._

_But someone else was there, offering their hand with a wink. You smiled and laughed and forgot, until the song ended and you saw him on the other side of the room, watching by himself._

You blinked and realized Jameson was watching your eyes, smiling knowingly as the music and the memory faded.

At the same time, the Colonel stood in the middle of another living room. He couldn’t remember how he got here, exactly, or why. He just knew he was looking for…something. Someone, maybe? He would know it when he found it, for sure.

He wandered through the kitchen and opened doors at random, finding nothing more interesting than a soundproofed room set up around a computer desk and some cameras. He walked over to the table and picked up a photograph of Mark with Chica, examining it before he carelessly let it slide out of his hand and hit the floor. He glanced at the empty dog bed and kicked at one of the toys littering the ground, but it didn’t even squeak.

Upstairs, he found more empty rooms but one bedroom in particular made him stop and walk in. This one was familiar somehow, and he stood in silence for a long time trying to remember why that was. He ran a hand over the bed and for a moment saw you lying there. You’d slept for days, sometimes lying so still that…

He remembered raising his gun and aiming it at the mirror, he remembered the way you crumpled into his arms, how he caught you this time but you still wouldn’t respond. He remembered the anger from the others. But you _asked_ him to do it. He told them that, over and over again, but they just didn’t understand.

The Colonel noticed another picture on the dresser and picked it up, studying the three faces there: Mark, Damien, and you, smiling for the camera. He sat down in the chair in the corner with the picture in hand, staring at the three of you as if there was some answer there, but it was just so hard to concentrate. He came here looking for…something, right?

Alone in the empty house, the Colonel’s head dipped forward and he fell asleep in the chair, the picture held tight to his chest.


	15. What's To Come

Dr. Schneeplestein looked up from his book and said, “Ah, good morning Y/N! You are up early today.”

“Good morning, Doctor,” you said, unable to match his enthusiasm as you joined him at the table. “Morning, Marvin.”

Marvin stopped inhaling his coffee long enough to wave at you but paused on his way back to basking in its beany warmth. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, just a bad dream.” Bad enough that you woke up in a sweat with no hope of going back to sleep even though you must have only gotten four hours of sleep in, if that much.

“What kind of dream?” Marvin asked.

“It’s…more of a memory,” you admitted, and quickly added, “It’s not really something I want to talk about.”

Dr. Schneeplestein’s momentary excitement that you might have remembered something disappeared, but he did say, “It might help to be talking about it, you know.”

“Maybe, I just…” You just didn’t want to think about it any more than you had to. It was the same nightmare that had been recurring as much as once a week since the mirror broke, and every time it left you feeling just as sick and panicked. Just as afraid that when you woke up, you would be back in that house again, back in that mirror.

“Vhen you are ready, maybe,” Doctor Schneeplestein said. He waited until you were eating breakfast, not that you had much of an appetite, to say, “Speaking of memories…”

He looked meaningfully at Marvin, waggling his eyebrows as he did so until the magician said, “Oh, right. Y/N, how do you feel about hypnosis?”

“Why do you ask?” you said warily, already sure you knew where this was going.

“I’ve been looking into a few things and I think it might help you remember something,” Marvin said and when you looked less than sure of the idea he added, “People do it all the time, and it’s completely safe, right, Schneep?”

“I vill be observing ze entire time,” Doctor Schneeplestein said, smiling.

“I don’t know,” you said slowly. Marvin’s magic was definitely impressive, but you had noticed that it didn’t always go exactly the way he planned it to. “Didn’t Dr. Iplier say not to try to force it?”

“Oh, vhat does he know?” Schneeplestein waved his hand. “He is not here, and I am qualified doctor, I know vhat is best.”

“I know it sounds strange if you’ve never done it before, but I’ll have a recorder on the whole time so you’ll know exactly what happened,” Marvin explained. “Mainly, the hypnosis is just to help you relax and focus, maybe help you talk through some things that might be blocking the memories. It’s not like I’m going to make you do something crazy like jump around or quack like a duck.”

“Oh.” Dr. Schneeplestein’s smile disappeared and he sighed. “Vell, vhat is even the point zhen?”

“Really?” you asked, looking at the doctor who shrugged.

“Do vhat you vant, Y/N, I don’t care anymore.”

“Schneep!”

Marvin explained it some more and showed you what he would do, and eventually you gave in and decided to give it a try. Even if you still weren’t sure it would do any good, you figured it was worth a shot. That said, an hour or two later when Marvin sat you down on the couch in Dr. Schneeplestein’s office, you weren’t exactly the picture of confidence.

“Just try to relax,” Marvin said gently. He checked over his shoulder and when Dr. Schneeplestein gave him the thumbs-up from his desk, where he sat manning the tape recorder, he held up a pocket watch dangling from a silver chain. When it spun around, you could just barely make out the ornate double ‘J’s carved into the back of it. “Keep your eyes on the watch and listen to my voice, Y/N.”

Marvin’s voice lowered to a quiet murmur, the words seeming to fade as the light reflecting off of the spinning watch flickered in your eyes.

_You blinked and with a jolt realized that you were in your room. Not the room at Mark’s house or with the egos, this was _your_ room, in the version of reality that you remembered. You stood up slowly, taking it all in. The clothes, the furniture, everything was just the same as you left it. You’d never even noticed the smell of your room, but now it was enough to send an incredible wave of nostalgia and homesickness crashing down on you._

_You pressed a hand to your mouth and blinked back tears, but it was no good. You were home._

_But even as the thought crossed your mind, you felt something off about the room. You turned around slowly, taking it all in again, and it suddenly hit you: where was the door?_

_There were no doors or windows, and where there should have been one you saw an ornate silver mirror that definitely did not belong in this room. As you walked toward it, you saw someone else in the mirror approach from the other side, but it wasn’t until you were close to the glass that you could see your face looking back at you. Except it wasn’t a reflection._

_The District Attorney stared back at you, studying you as carefully as you studied them. You both moved closer at the same time, but when the District Attorney’s hand stretched through the glass and grabbed your own you were backing away, trying to pull yourself free, but they were too strong._

_On the other side of the mirror you tried to turn around and go back, but the mirror shattered at your touch. There was nothing here but darkness and the cold that made your bones ache and your breath freeze._

_“No,” you whispered, the cold making it hard to even speak. “No, nononono…”_

_This couldn’t be happening, not again. You couldn’t be back here, alone in this place—_

_Except you weren’t alone. The District Attorney’s hands were on your shoulders, warm and tight. When you risked opening your eyes again, they pointed down, at the broken pieces of mirror scattered all over the ground. Each piece showed something else, the image flashing across your mind to be replaced by another just as fast: _

_The Colonel’s gun lying on the table. Mark curled in on himself in a completely different kind of darkness. Dark, leaning over the Host, whose bandages were stained and falling away. The table from the Jims’ video, except now you were sitting at it. Marvin shaking your shoulders, trying to get you to snap out of it. Your hand tracing the letters carved into the table, finishing the half-formed words. Jameson and the Detective, their eyes wide with fear. The Iplier egos crowding around a prone figure on the floor. The Colonel, seated across from you at the table. The cane lying in pieces on the floor. Dr. Schneeplestein rising from his chair, realizing something is wrong. The ringing, the pain as you looked down at your hands and saw the cracks and there was no one there to help you—_

_The District Attorney tightened their grip on your shoulders and you looked away from the broken pieces of the mirror, all showing the place from the Jims’ video. The District Attorney smiled and snapped their fingers, once._

And you woke up.

Marvin breathed out and relaxed his grip on your shoulders while behind him Dr. Schneeplestein said a long stream of words in German that was either a prayer or some very intense swearing.

“Y/N, are you okay?” Marvin asked. He could feel your heart racing as you gasped for air like you hadn’t been breathing this entire time.

“I—” You stopped and shook your head.

“Vait, I have a bucket!” Dr. Schneeplestein cried, reaching under his desk.

A minute later you leaned against the back of the couch, clutching the bucket to your chest like it was a life preserver, and asked, “What happened?”

“I’m sorry,” Marvin said, again. This must have been the third time now. “We barely even started and you just…froze up. I’ve never had something like that happen before, I promise.”

“A panic attack, I zhink,” Dr. Schneeplestein said. He was sitting next to you now, fingers on your neck as he felt your pulse before pressing a hand to your forehead. “How are you feeling now?”

“Better,” you said, not that that was saying much compared to before. “Just…Let’s not do that again, okay?”

You tried explaining what you saw, in between Dr. Schneeplestein forcing you to drink some water and Marvin running over it again and again on the tape, trying to figure out what he did wrong. They listened but didn’t seem to know what to make of what you claimed to see, not that you could blame them. Dr. Schneeplestein was more worried about how you kept shivering, and even when the thermometer showed your temperature was fine he insisted that you wrap up in a blanket and lie down.

You must have dozed off at some point, because when you woke up you were still on the doctor’s couch. You could hear his voice outside of his office, but that wasn’t what woke you up.

Your hand dug around until you pulled out your phone from somewhere in the folds of the blanket and pressed the ‘G’ icon that was lighting up the screen and chiming. “Hello, Google.”

“Y/N.” The yellow-shirted Google paused, taking in your image on the screen, but apparently decided against commenting as he continued with, “We have prepared our third request for information.”

You groaned and pulled the blanket back over your head. “Now?”

With the blanket over your head, you couldn’t see Google look at someone else off-screen for help before he said, “That would be correct. Y/N agreed.”

You sighed and picked the phone back up. “Okay, what is it this time?”

“We wish to know everything Y/N can tell us about Damien and Celine.”

“…What?”

“We wish to know everything Y/N can tell us about Damien and Celine,” Google repeated.

You sat up, taking the phone in both hands now. “Google, what’s going on with these questions? Why do you want to know about them?”

Google hesitated and then said, “We are aware that Damien and Celine are part of Dark. We wish to know more about him in order to perform our objectives more efficiently.”

Yeah, like there wasn’t anything suspicious about that. You said, “Google, Damien and Celine might be part of Dark in a sense, but he is _not_ them. You understand that, right?”

“Did Dark not receive any characteristics from them?” Google asked.

“I don’t know, maybe? Nothing good, anyways,” you said. “If you know about the videos, then you know as much as I do, honestly. I don’t think I even met Celine before that weekend, and I still don’t remember anything from before.”

“I have analyzed the videos, I am merely seeking confirmation. Describe Celine.”

“She, uh…She was married to Mark, was having an affair with Wilford,” you said, not really sure what kind of answer Google was looking for. “I remember she could just walk into a room and control it. Everyone just kind of…listened to her, followed her lead. I guess because she was the only one of us who seemed to know what she was talking about. Dark probably gets that from her.”

“And Damien?” Google asked. “What traits did Dark receive from him?”

“Nothing,” you said out of reflex, but Google just stared at you until you admitted, “I mean, he could get angry sometimes, but so could Celine.”

You remembered Damien arguing with the Colonel and Celine yelling at you when you failed to give her what she wanted, and you muttered, “Dark probably got a double dose of that.”

“Anything else?” Google asked.

“Protective.” You weren’t sure where the word came from, but as soon as you said it you knew it was true. Damien had been the most concerned about Mark, he had been worried for you and Celine in that room. He cared about his friends. So, of course Dark had to take that and twist it. “And Dark became possessive.”

“Extremely so.”

You heard the mutter, but while it came from the phone it didn’t look like Google said it.

“Google, is someone else there with you?” you asked.

“To sum it up, the traits Dark received from his components are manipulation and a need for control, anger leading to rashness, and possessiveness born out of sentimentality,” Google said, ignoring the question.

“Pretty sure that’s not what I said.”

“Are these extrapolations incorrect?” Google asked.

“Well, no,” you admitted. “But seriously Google, what’s going on? These questions are—”

“What Y/N agreed to,” Google interrupted. He opened his mouth as if to say something else, and this time you definitely saw him look at someone off screen. When he spoke again, it was like he was repeating words someone else was giving him, especially as he said, “You…need to…trust us. _Please_.”

He said the last words through his teeth, like every circuit in his body objected to it.

“No, no, like you mean it,” someone who sounded suspiciously like Bim Trimmer whispered off-screen. “Now they’re just going to worry—”

More voices trying desperately to whisper chimed in and you felt the headache forming.

“We do not have time for this,” Google snapped before he said to you, “Expect the fourth and final question later, Y/N,” and hung up the phone.

When Dr. Schneeplestein returned to his office a minute later, he asked, “What is wrong, Y/N? Do you need ze bucket again?”

You were tempted to say yes.


	16. Unfinished Message

“Please, Mark, just call me back, okay?”

“Perhaps Y/N is misunderstanding?” Dr. Schneeplestein suggested as you hung up on Mark’s voicemail and continued to pace the office. “You are having a very bad shock earlier.”

“No, something’s going on,” you said. You tried to force yourself to stand still but you had so much nervous energy running through you that you started bouncing on your heels. “Have you heard from Dr. Iplier since yesterday?”

“Vell, no, but he is very busy doctor. Ze Ipliers are very destructive.”

You nodded, knowing exactly how true that was, but you pointed out, “Didn’t something seem off when we talked to him and the Host yesterday? Does he normally cut off a call like that?”

“Yes, quite often,” Dr. Schneeplestein said cheerfully. He saw this wasn’t helping and said, “I vill call him now und show you nozhing is wrong, okay?”

Ten minutes later, when his requests to video chat went ignored along with his texts and calls, Dr. Schneeplestein admitted, “He may not be ze best person to prove point. Come along.”

You found Marvin, and Jackieboy Man in the living room, and before long Chase and Jameson were poking their heads in to see what was going on. They seemed ready to agree with Dr. Schneeplesteing at first, until…

“Huh, Bing’s not answering,” Chase said, pulling his phone away from his ear to look at it.

“And Silver just goes straight to voicemail,” Jackieboy said. He frowned at his phone and added, “It doesn’t look like he’s been on patrol in a couple of days either. That’s not like him.”

They tried a few other egos without any luck while you called Tyler to see if maybe Mark would take any of his calls. You were aware of the egos listening in as you said, “Oh, okay. Let me know if you hear anything, okay?”

“Tyler hasn’t heard from Mark since the night before last,” you explained, already pulling up Amy’s number in your contacts. Busy. You hesitated and then asked, “Marvin, could you take me to Mark’s house, just to check in? If something is going on with the egos, he needs to know about it.”

“We’ll all go,” Jackieboy said and the other egos nodded. That was surprising, and not just because you expected them to argue against you going at all. “Wait, can you take all of us, Marvin?”

“Pft, can I?” Marvin scoffed and rolled up his sleeves. The other egos immediately braced themselves, Jackieboy and Jameson both grabbing you before there was a flash of green smoke and the same lurching feeling you had the last time Marvin teleported you. Except this time, you wound up lying face down in the grass with at least two other egos on top of you.

You weren’t the only one groaning, but man Jackieboy was heavier than he looked.

“Sorry,” Marvin said as he pulled himself out of a nearby bush. He brushed himself off and readjusted his cat mask as he admitted, “I might have rushed it a bit, but hey, we’re here!”

Well, you were actually across the street from Mark’s house, but close enough. The Septic egos gave Marvin a hard time as they followed you to Mark’s door, but they all fell silent when the door creaked open at your knock.

“Hello?” you called, but already you knew something was wrong. Chica should have been barking by now, and Mark wouldn’t just leave his door open like this, not if she could get out. “Mark?”

“Let me go first,” Jackieboy murmured. You and the other egos followed him into the house, fanning out slightly as you went. All of Mark’s stuff was still here, so it didn’t look like he’d been robbed, but it wasn’t normal for him to leave all of the doors open.

All six of you turned as one at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, Jackieboy and Jameson both taking defensive stances while Marvin summoned a ball of fire to his hand and Chase leveled his nerf gun at the man on the stairs.

“Whoa, whoa, what are you—Hey!” He ducked as a nerf dart passed by his head and glared at Chase, who sheepishly hid his gun behind his back.

“Abe?” You stared at the Detective, feeling almost as confused as he looked when he reached the bottom of the stairs and took in the group. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“I was in the area and I had some questions for Mark,” Abe said. “Since he won’t take my calls, dropping in is the only way I can ever get anything out of him, but when I get here the door’s open and no one’s around. So, of course I had to take a look around.”

“Hm, that sounds a little convenient,” Jackieboy said as he approached the Detective and leaned in to give him a suspicious look. “How do we know you didn’t just break in?”

“Because I know where he hides the spare key,” Abe said, leaning in as well so that they were inches apart.

Jackieboy didn’t break his stare as he said, “You smell like coffee.”

“So do you, buddy.”

“I’m not your buddy, friend,” Jackieboy said.

Abe didn’t blink. “I’m not your friend, pal.”

Knowing they could do this for a while, you cut in and said, “Actually, Mark moved the spare key.”

Abe blinked and looked at you. “What? When?”

“Right after he made sure you saw where he hid it. Jackieboy, Abe’s a detective and my friend, and Abe, these are—Oh, hang on, I need to take this.” You turned away from the others as you answered your phone, completely missing the silent conversation that continued between Jackieboy and the Detective with the other egos chiming in with gestures of their own. “Hey Amy. Yeah, I was just calling to see if you’d heard from Mark lately.”

“Oh, okay…So she’s with you?…And you locked the door behind you, right? No, just checking.” It was good to hear Amy’s voice, but you were left even more worried as you said, “Sure, I’ll let you know when I find out something.”

“Vell, vhat did she say?” Dr. Schneeplestein asked as you turned around to find Jackieboy and the Detective quickly stepping away from each other.

“Mark called yesterday, saying the Host had some lead on where to find Wilford and needed her to come pick up Chica and take care of her for a couple of days,” you explained.

“Well, that’s good, right?” Chase asked. “Might explain where the others are too.”

“Maybe, but Amy said he sounded strange,” you said. “Like something was off, but she didn’t get a chance to really talk to him.”

Not to mention the last time you talked to the Host, he had been completely against looking for Wilford. What would make him change his mind? And it still didn’t explain why the Googles and the other egos were asking so many questions about Dark.

“It won’t take long to find out. Everyone ready to go?” Marvin asked, already rolling up his sleeves again. He did spare a glance at the Detective and added, “Not you.”

“Hold on, Partner,” Abe said, pulling you to the side. He lowered his voice, but you knew the egos were listening as he said, “Look, I don’t know what’s going on with Mark and these weirdos, but if you need any help, just let me know. Also, I found the place from the video if you’re still interested in that.”

“Wait, you did?”

“What video?” Jackieboy asked, not even bothering to pretend like he wasn’t listening.

“Um, it’s…It’s a video from a while back,” you said. “From the Valentine’s Day project.”

“Ah,” Schneeplestein said, his eyes already lighting up with understanding even as you struggled to explain why that mattered.

The District Attorney had showed it to you while you were under hypnosis. The pieces had been a blur in the vision, but you knew this was important. You _needed_ to see something there, and as soon as you realized that you knew you had to go. “I think if I go, I might be able to remember something important.”

“I can take you there,” Abe said. “My car’s just around the corner from here.”

“Jameson can go with you and Scruffy here while we check out what’s going on with the Ipliers,” Jackieboy said, surprising you in more ways than one. You had expected him to argue, to want you to wait, but then you saw the look the other egos shared and realized he didn’t _want_ you or Jameson going with them. They were that worried about what they would find at the Iplier house. “Is that okay?”

Jameson nodded and threw an arm around your shoulders. You could see his speech card as it said, _“I’ve got this covered, boys!”_

Abe frowned at Jameson, his brow furrowing as he looked the ego up and down. “…Do I know you?”

Jameson considered this, tapping his finger against his mouth a couple of times before he lit up and started signing at the Detective.

Abe gave him a disgusted look and asked, “Do you sign to your mother with those hands?”

Jameson looked from the Detective to his hands, clearly confused.

“We’ll call when we figure out what’s going on, okay?” Jackieboy said to you. “This shouldn’t take long. JJ, you know what to do if Scruffy tries anything weird, right?”

Jameson nodded and took up a fighting stance, moving his fists like he was about to start an old-time boxing match.

“…Sure,” Jackieboy said. He stepped closer to Marvin along with Dr. Schneeplestein and Chase, and with another puff of green smoke the four egos disappeared. You hoped that this time maybe they had a smoother landing, but you didn’t have much time to think about that as you followed Abe and Jameson out of the house and to the Detective’s car.

It was a short drive, thankfully, because you weren’t sure Abe’s “car” (if you could even call the thing that) would make it much further. You parked across the street from the small building, but it wasn’t until you were coming up to the counter window that you saw the signs.

It was an ice cream shop.

“Look familiar?” Abe asked as the three of you stopped at the tables.

You hesitated as you took it in. It was a small shop, more of a hole in the wall than anything, and at this time of day all of the tables were empty. You couldn’t tell if it was familiar from the videos, from your visions, or something else, and you finally said, “I’m not sure. I just…need a minute.”

“Here, you can take a look around while me and Bowler Hat Guy go talk to the guy at the window, see if anyone here remembers the Colonel,” Abe said.

Jameson leaned over and whispered something in Abe’s ear and you saw the Detective’s eyes flicker as he “heard” the speech slide.

“Yeah, of course we’re getting ice cream,” he said. He paused and gave Jameson a look, adding, “Don’t do that again.”

Jameson grinned and looked at you. _“What kind do you want?”_

“Uh…” You hesitated, silently cursing Mark and Dark for making vanilla and chocolate weird, and said, “You can pick.”

While they went to the window, you made your way to the table from the video and sat down. There was something…

You looked down at the old wood. Someone had tried to paint it, but they hadn’t bothered to sand it down first. You could see multiple messages left on the table by people who had been here before, some written in marker on top of the paint, others carved into the wood beneath it. Most of it was the usual stuff, people’s names plus the year or M+A in a heart, that kind of thing, but as you ran your hand over the table’s surface you found the half-finished words.

_It was fuzzy, like looking at old movie reel, but you looked up and saw the man sitting across from you, laughing and talking in a loud, booming voice that rushed past without leaving any words in your mind. But above his pink mustache his eyes were sad, distant. And then just as quickly he changed, his voice low and menacing, his eyes terrifying, and then he was apologizing, his moods changing too fast to follow._

_You looked down at your hands, saw the fade coming, knew that it wouldn’t be long before you returned to the mirror, to your prison. You clutched your hands together tight, trying to hold it off for longer, but he misunderstood and started apologizing again. You felt your mouth open as the words failed to come and gestured, but he still didn’t understand._

_He was walking away, to the counter, you didn’t have time. You looked around but there was no pen, no marker, but there was a metal spoon that you drove into the wood, trying to write the words._

But now, as you felt the ridges that spelled “Wil I—” you knew Dr. Iplier was wrong when he thought you couldn’t remember anything. And you knew what happened next. You ran out of time, and when Wilford turned around you were gone. Again.

You ran your hand over the letters, trying desperately to remember how it ended, but it was no good. What did he think happened? Did he try to look for you? For how long? Dr. Iplier claimed that Wilford didn’t remember anything after his episodes, but you remembered the first thing he said to you:

_“Y/N! There you are, you scamp!”_

Like you’d just been hiding all that time.

You looked up and saw him sitting across the table from you again, his eyes soft and sad as he watched you. Except this time, it wasn’t a memory.

“…Colonel?”


	17. Off Balance

Not long after your last call with Google, Dr. Iplier jumped at the sound of the infirmary door opening. Beside him, Google watched the doctor leap to his feet as Dark walked in, supporting the Host. Without a glance at the doctor, Dark led the Host to one of the beds and said, “Take care of him.”

“What’s wrong?” Dr. Iplier asked. He looked at the Host, who sat hunched over, his dry and cracked lips barely moving, voice little more than a whisper, bandages desperately in need of a change, and turned on Dark. “What did you do?”

“I merely asked him some questions,” Dark said, his aura darkening at the doctor’s tone. “Which I am still waiting on the answers for. Change his bandages and have him ready before I get back.”

He turned and walked out without another word. Dr. Iplier listened for his footsteps and glanced at Google, who shook his head. They couldn’t risk talking freely.

“Google, could you get some warm water and fresh bandages?” Dr. Iplier asked. While the android took care of that, the doctor poured the Host a glass of water and pressed it into the ego’s hands. He waited until the Host had drunk almost the entire glass before he asked, “Are you okay?”

“The Host will live,” the Host said, his voice still scratchy and weak. “The Host is merely tired. The Host has strained himself since yesterday searching for the Colonel at Dark’s insistence. Darkiplier cares about very little else now.”

“We do not know how much time we have,” Google said as he passed the doctor the bandages and water. The android tilted his head toward the doctor’s computer but said, “You shouldn’t waste time talking.”

Dr. Iplier glanced at his computer and saw the request for a video chat from Schneeplestein. They all knew it was only a matter of time now before someone came to check in and this would become that much harder to control.

“There is enough time,” the Host said. “The Host finishes his water and asks Dr. Iplier for more before he begins changing the bandages.”

Dr. Iplier saw the ego’s hand gestures and brought back a pen and some paper along with the water, which the Host drank only a little slower than the first glass before he began narrating again.

“Dr. Iplier carefully removes the Host’s bandages before picking up a rag and soaking it in the warm water,” the Host said while his hand wrote something else. He might not be able to see the paper, but years as the Author had given him more than enough muscle memory to go on, even if his writing was scratchy and tilted. “Dr. Iplier begins to wash away the dried blood.”

While he narrated the doctor’s actions, the Host wrote:

_Recording room_

_Ear plugs_

_Light_

_Keep distance_

Google waited until he was done and then nodded, sending the message to the other units to let them know which plan they were going with. They had made several overnight, refining them this morning after their call with you, but they had to wait for the Host to give the final say.

He was momentarily distracted when Dr. Iplier inhaled sharply and tugged at the collar of the Host’s jacket to take a closer look at something there, but the Host grabbed his hand and said, “Dr. Iplier needs to focus on the bandages now. The rest can wait.”

Out in the hall, Dark leaned near the door where he could keep an ear on what was going on inside the infirmary, but his attention was on Mark’s phone. He watched it vibrate until it stopped, and then waited patiently for the new voicemail before unlocking the phone.

You had been calling Mark a lot, hadn’t you? Dark listened to the first missed call, smiling to himself as he heard the anger in your voice that spilled over into the next message. By the third you had calmed down, just asking Mark to call you back, your voice muffled by the wind. He frowned, wondering why you were outside, but it was the last message that made him pause.

“Hey Mark, it’s me again. Look, I just talked to Google and he sounded a little weird, I, uh…I haven’t heard from you or any of the others in a while, and I’m just worried something’s…I know you’re busy and everything, but I really think you need to check in on the egos. Just call me back, okay?”

Dark played with the idea of calling you back and pretending to be Mark but the idea of you actually being happy to hear from _him_ was enough to make him rethink it and put the phone back in his pocket. You were bound to notice eventually, but that just made it all the more urgent that he get this taken care of.

“Are you done?” Dark asked as he walked back into the infirmary.

Dr. Iplier put one more strip over the bandages to keep them in place before he said, “At this rate, he’s going to need a blood transfusion.”

“Are you done?” Dark asked again, putting a different kind of emphasis on the words. He would remember the look the doctor gave him for later.

“Dr. Iplier has finished changing the Host’s bandages,” the Host said as he stood, using one hand to brace himself on the bed. Before Dark could move to support him, he pulled away and stood that much straighter. “The Host is waiting for Dark.”

Once they were out of the room, Google grabbed the box of ear plugs from the medical supplies while Dr. Iplier took the clothes hidden in the bottom drawer of his desk and began to change.

The Host refused to lean on Dark as they walked through the silent house, even though he stumbled occasionally. It was not a normal thing for the Host to trip or fall, but Dark felt only spite, thinking to himself that if the Host had just cooperated then it wouldn’t have had to come to this. But he would make sure the Host learned that lesson before they were through.

Dark walked to his office, paying little attention to the fruit scattered across the floor as he passed by your room although the Host carefully avoided stepping on any of it. Dark opened his door and had a single glimpse of a black-and-white striped ball of fury hurtling toward the door before he slammed it shut and felt the thump that followed.

After a full second to recover, Dark asked, “Do you mind telling me why there is a badger in my office?”

The Host kept his face perfectly straight as he answered, “The Host has found it best not to question it.”

Dark glared at him but was distracted by another thump that shook the door followed by scratching. He reached for the doorknob.

“The Host takes two steps to the left but trusts Dark’s judgment in this matter.”

Dark grit his teeth. He didn’t have time to deal with this. “Fine, it can wait. We’ll do this somewhere else.”

“The Host’s recording studio is soundproofed and can accommodate Darkiplier. Most of the others do not interfere with the Host there, but—”

“Let’s go,” Dark said, interrupting the Host and he led the way back to the stairs.

Once they were gone, the King of the Squirrels stuck his head out of your room to make sure the coast was clear before he dashed to Dark’s office, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

The second he opened the door the badger made a beeline back to your room and the safety of the space underneath your bed, away from the office that still reeked with Dark’s aura even after he had been gone for several minutes. While the king tried to comfort his striped friend, Yandereplier and Ed Edgar snuck out of Wilford’s room where the others were changing and went straight for the desk in Dark’s office, neither wanting to be the first to comment on the heavy presence that stifled the air and made them want to run out too.

When they reached the studio, the Host brushed past Dark and took the seat behind the table covered in recording equipment. The second he sat down the ego breathed out slowly, his whole frame seeming to relax as he ran his fingers over the familiar equipment, paying little attention as Dark locked the door. Not that he would have bothered to tell the man that the lock had long since been broken by one of Wilford’s impromptu visits. He found a dial and the speakers on the wall buzzed into life with a noticeable thrum.

“The Host finds the sound to be comforting,” he said in response to Dark’s unasked question. “It helps the Host to concentrate and focus.”

“Then this should be that much easier,” Dark said, and already the room was beginning to feel darker, more closed in. “Tell me where Wilford is.”

The Host bowed his head as he said, “It is the same as before. Wilford Warfstache and the Colonel are blurring together, making him even more difficult to read than normal. His mind is scattered, he does not know what he is doing or where he is most of the time.”

“I want to know about now,” Dark said, leaning forward in his chair. The Host had been careful over the past 24 hours on how much information he gave Dark about Wilford, and he knew from the tone in his voice that he would soon lose his patience and be behind him once more, his aura tearing into him again.

The Host could not risk that, not now. “The Colonel is watching, waiting, afraid to speak, afraid he is going to scare them again.”

Dark listened, his eyes on the Host’s face and failing to notice as the ego’s hand flipped a switch among all the others. The mic turned on and outside of the room, the “Recording” sign lit up.

“Them? Who is he with?”

“Wilford sits down at the table, the Colonel oblivious to the others.” The Host’s bandages were already beginning to stain again. “The Host…The Host is having difficulty, the others are clear, but the other person at the table is difficult to see, as if—”

The Host stopped and then to Dark’s surprise he actually laughed. Before Dark could stand or demand an explanation, the door burst open behind him. As he turned, he did not see the Host pull his noise-cancelling headphones on and he could only stare in disbelief at the Googles and Bing as they barged into the room.

“What do you—”

The feedback was incredible, when the Host pressed the microphone against the speakers, but it was nothing compared to the absolute crescendo of pain that happened when all five androids not just took the noise but fed into it themselves and amplified it. The Host pressed the headphones tighter against his ears but Dark collapsed to his knees, his hands doing nothing to muffle the ear-piercing ring that made his own sound nice in comparison.

Dark forced one eye open and though his vision was blurred he could see a Google guiding the Host out into the hall. He roared, his aura lashing out as the ringing that accompanied him hit a newer, higher pitch that could be heard through the entire house. The lights overhead flickered and died as the speakers fell silent, and the other androids staggered as if physically knocked back.

Breathing heavily, ears still ringing and numb, Dark lay there on the floor for he did not know how long before he forced himself to get up. The others were gone, so no one saw him try and fail more than once to get to his feet as the room spun and split into two equally nauseating versions. To anyone else the hearing damage might have been severe enough to be permanent, but Dark staggered forward, sure in the knowledge that they would heal soon enough.

He couldn’t say the same for the androids once he got his hands on them.

He ran a hand along the dark hallway, using it to steady himself as with each step he imagined how he would tear them apart piece by piece until there might be enough left to make one unit, one that would understand exactly what would happen if it crossed him again.

The hallway twisted and spun and he could hear nothing but the ringing, which is why it took him so long to notice the ego at the end of the hall even with his bright yellow shirt and pink suspenders, his face lit from below by the candle in his hand.

“Wilford?” At the sound of his voice, the man blew out the candle and when he turned to walk away Dark tried to use his aura to catch up with him. “Tried” being the key word as he overshot and slammed into the wall, everything around him spinning even more than before. Disoriented he staggered back and looked both ways but Wilford was nowhere to be seen until he turned around and saw him at the other end of the hall walking in the other direction.

Dark tried teleporting again with the same result and then ran, but the man was out of sight before he made it more than a few feet. As he turned the corner something sped by him and even with his still recovering hearing he could hear the crack of the gunshot.

Dark spun around and saw Wilford in his red-and-white striped suit hold up the gun as if surprised it was there in his hand before he turned and ran, flailing his arms and legs about. Dark ran after him, but just before he reached a cross-section in the layout of the floor Wilford passed in front of him going from left to right. By the time he reached the middle of the cross-section Wilford had stopped several yards away and stood watching him.

Another gunshot, and Dark saw the red-and-white striped Wilford on his right. He glanced to his left and saw a third Wilford, and already knew what to expect when he turned and saw the fourth. They kept their distance, but he knew the pink mustaches were fake, the clothes stolen from Wilford’s room.

His aura began to spread and he heard his own voice in his numb ears as he began, “I will break every single one of you, I will—”

“Damien.”

Dark froze and then turned to his right. Even though his hearing was still returning, he knew exactly what he just heard. This Wilford had been joined by the blue-shirted Google and the King of the Squirrels.

“Why did you say that name?” Dark asked, stepping forward as his aura flickered and cracked. But he knew exactly how to handle this, and he felt the smile curl his lips as he said, “Okay, Google.”

The Google did not respond. There was no accompanying ping, no change in his demeanor.

“Celine.”

He turned again, and there was a second Google, along with the Jims.

“Damien, behind you.”

“Celine!”

Every time he turned, there were more of them until he realized that he was surrounded. All of the egos were here, crowding the halls but keeping their distance, and every one looked deadly serious.

His aura was a mess of reds and blues amidst the darkness, his form hard to make out amongst many, some of them screaming, the others shifting through various expressions of rage as he said, “What is this? What, do you think you can intimidate me?”

“No,” the Host said. He was leaning heavily on the green-shirted Google, his sightless eyes on Dark. “Fear and intimidation is what Darkiplier does.”

“But we can’t help but notice you’re a little outnumbered this time,” Ed Edgar said.

“And yet you’re still afraid to even get close to me.” Dark’s aura flared out and he laughed when the egos took a step back. “You pathetic—"

He grunted as the blue-shirted Google hit him from behind, pinning him to the wall with a wooden staff pressed against his chest.

“We just want to offer you a deal,” the Wilford in the red and white striped suit said, identifying himself as Bim Trimmer.

“We will only ask this once,” Google said, the red light glowing behind his eyes. When Dark started to move, ready to tear into the android, Google added, “You may want to reconsider that.”

Dark followed his stare and realized what Google was using to pin him against the wall: a simple black cane with an ornate silver head. It was already cracked, and Dark’s movement made the wood creak with the threat of snapping in half. This close, he knew the android saw his hesitation, however brief, and he in turn saw the colored ear plug in Google’s ear.

“Give us back Mark,” Bim said, spinning the gun around in his hand with every sign that he had about as much of a clue how gun safety worked as the real Wilford, “That’s all we want from you, and that is all we will _ever_ want from you.”

“Mark.” Dark’s aura receded until it was barely visible but his voice betrayed his new level of anger. “Do you think he cares about you? He abandoned all of you. He would have let everyone forget you, and you want him back?”

“No one said we _liked_ the guy,” Silver said, his arms wrapped around his chest as if self-conscious without his suit. “But he’s ours, and we want him back.”

“I gave you _**everything!**_ You would be _**nothing**_ without me.”

“We know what you are, Darkiplier,” Dr. Iplier said, his pink mustache slipping. He glanced at the Host as he added, “And what you’ve done. No more.”

Agreements followed from the other egos, only slightly muffled. Dark’s hearing had almost completely returned. While his sense of balance came back with it, what little patience he had disappeared. Google stumbled forward as Dark disappeared, and the green-shirted Google had no defense when Dark’s aura attacked his systems. The android fell to the floor in a flurry of sparks and Dark felt at least one rib crack in the Host when he slammed the ego up against the wall.

“Where is he?” Dark asked, his aura holding the others back for now. “Where is the Colonel?”

“Darkiplier is too late,” the Host answered. A trickle of blood leaked out from his bandage and slid down past his smiling mouth. “Y/N has already found him.”

Dark froze, aware that the egos were forcing their way through as he let this sink in. The Host slid to the floor and the other egos paused when Dark and the green-shirted Google disappeared into his aura, leaving Mark passed out on the floor in their place. That would keep them distracted long enough even without the Septic egos suddenly appearing in the middle of all that mess in a green puff of smoke. Already planning what he would do to the egos once he returned, Dark brought the struggling Google to the conference room and let the ear plug in his hand drop to the floor.

“Okay, Google. Find Y/N.”


	18. Trigger

“Oh no! No, it’s okay,” he said gently, as if afraid you might disappear again. His smile was big, disbelieving even as he said, “I knew I’d find you.”

“Wil—Colonel, you’re here, you…you…” You struggled for words until honesty won out. “You look terrible.”

His eyes were hollowed and feverishly bright even without the pink tinging the brown, and he seemed incredibly tired as he leaned heavily on the table like even just sitting up took too much strength. His normally loud, booming voice was cracked and weak and together with his sunken cheeks you wondered if he had eaten or drunk anything since the last time you saw him. His bow tie was gone and one of his pink suspenders had broken at the clasp and now scraped the ground beneath his seat. He didn’t even seem to notice how you gestured wildly at Abe and Jameson to keep them from coming any closer, because the last thing you needed was for him to spot the Detective. You weren’t sure what made it more awkward, the fact that they sat down at a table behind the Colonel, ready to jump in if needed, or the fact that they were eating ice cream as they no doubt listened to every word.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, his chuckle little more than a breath as he added, “You just keep hiding from me.”

“Colonel, Wilford, we’ve been looking for you,” you said. “Where have you been?”

He shrugged listlessly. “Places. Looking. Looking for you, looking for Damien and Celine.”

He took a short, harsh breath and covered his eyes with his hand. “I couldn’t find them anywhere!”

You had to tell him. “They’re gone. They’ve been gone for years, Colonel.”

“I know that!” He uncovered his eyes and they were bright pink now. That’s when you realized that his gun was in his other hand. His voice, weak as it was, thundered as he added, “Everyone keeps saying that, but you’re here, you came back, Mark came back. Why won’t they come back? Where are they?!”

He saw your expression and immediately softened again, the pink receding as he said, “No, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”

You watched him set the gun down and behind him Abe slowly relaxed, his hand still inside his jacket. This was bad, and it was only a matter of time before this got so much worse. But what could you do?

Your hand found the unfinished message again and traced the letters with your fingertips. You still didn’t know how it was supposed to end, but you knew how it started.

“Wil, I need to tell you something, something important.” No, you thought to yourself as you looked at the gun lying on the table between you, you needed to tell him everything. “Celine told me that death didn’t mean the same thing in that house. She told me that after I died, when I…when I saw them. That’s how Mark could come back, and they told me that’s how I could come back if I would just let them in.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked. “Let them in, like…like they’re a part of you?”

“No, not a part of me.” You swallowed, forcing yourself to look him in the eye as you said, “A part of Dark.”

He fell silent as you tried to explain. How the last time you saw Celine in that room where the light spilled out, she wasn’t Celine anymore. How the door was locked and you still didn’t know what happened in that room. You didn’t even want to guess how they died. You told him how you saw them after the fall, how they told you coming back was possible, how you trusted them.

Only for them, for _him_ to leave you in that mirror. You told him about that moment when you realized that Damien and Celine were gone and something else had taken their place. The moment you realized they weren’t coming back.

“Wil, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” you said as you came around the table to sit next to him.

He let you pull him close, holding him as the tears ran down his cheeks and he did nothing to stop the sobs that racked his chest. He didn’t see you turn your head when someone tapped on your shoulder, or where the handkerchief Jameson passed you came from before you gave it to him.

“It’s my fault.”

You probably wouldn’t have heard him if you hadn’t been sitting so close.

“I did this, I did all of this,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper as if speaking only to himself. “Celine and I, we—we loved each other, and she was so unhappy, if you had seen her—we never meant for it to go so far, but Mark wasn’t the same anymore and he knew, he must have known—”

“Colonel—”

His voice was rising now and he didn’t even seem to hear you as he continued, “If I hadn’t killed Mark, Celine wouldn’t have been there. She and Damien wouldn’t have been in that room, they’d still be here, the Detective wouldn’t have gotten in my way, but I did it, I killed him, I killed them, I killed you—”

“Wil, I don’t blame you.”

_You can’t blame him. Honestly, he’s a good man._

You didn’t know how much of Celine was even left by that point, how much of those final words were her own or just whatever once resided in that house saying whatever it took to get you to trust them. To trust it. But that didn’t matter, because it was true.

You weren’t sure what the District Attorney would have said, if you would have felt differently if you remembered more. But you remembered enough about what happened afterward in that house, and you knew enough about the Colonel to know what everything that happened did to him to turn him into Wilford.

“Wil, you did some stupid and terrible things,” you said, but before he could do more than nod in agreement you continued, “But you weren’t the only one. There were so many things we did wrong that weekend, all of us. I just stood by and watched it all happen, and then when I had the chance to come back I took it without even thinking. I helped _create_ Dark. And I had enough time in that house to think of all the things that I could have done differently, to blame myself, to blame everyone else. I had so much time to hate you, to hate Mark, to hate everyone who let all of this happen.”

You pulled the Colonel into a hug and said into his shoulder, “I had enough time to forgive you, too.”

“Well that’s about the corniest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, his weak laugh sounding more like Wilford, but he didn’t let go.

The moment was slightly ruined by Jameson or Abe, you weren’t sure which, sniffling somewhere behind you, but what really did it was the phone vibrating in your pocket along with a now familiar tune. You would have ignored it if he hadn’t taken the opportunity to pull away and use Jameson’s handkerchief to clean his face.

“Now’s not a good time, Google,” you said without looking at the screen, too busy watching the man next to you for any sign of whether you were dealing with the Colonel or Wilford now. Just saying a few words wasn’t enough, it wasn’t nearly enough, but maybe it could start to help.

“W-where is Y-y/N?”

“What?” You looked down at the screen and realized that there was something very wrong with the green-shirted Google looking back at you. He was glitching again and there was something off about his eyes, like one of the pupils was larger than the other and shaking just slightly back and forth. Even as you watched a spark twitched his body and a series of beeps began to come from the phone and an icon you had never seen before showed up in the bottom right corner, a dot with lines radiating out from it. “Google, what happened? Are you okay?”

He did not repeat the question, although his mouth moved as if attempting to say something. In his silence you realized that the beeping from your phone wasn’t random.

“S-O-S,” said the Colonel. His voice was so low you didn’t even think the phone would have been able to pick it up, but as soon as he said it the beeping became faster, more urgent. As he continued to translate the Morse code, it dawned on you what the icon was.

“R-U-N-D-A-R-K—”

A tracking symbol. You turned off the phone and stood up. “We need to go, now.”

He didn’t argue, but Wilford was so weak now that he couldn’t even stand on his own. You pulled one of his arms over your shoulder and just barely managed to get him up on his feet, but he was leaning on you so heavily that you knew it would take Jameson or Abe’s help to get him to the car.

They were already on their way to help but stopped short when Dark appeared in the space between you, his aura leaving the table area darker despite the bright sunshine.

“Wilford, Y/N!” He smiled and walked toward you, his confidence betrayed by the way his aura buzzed and crackled erratically, the reds and blues fraying around his figure like a bad 3D effect. “I—”

“Stay back,” the Colonel said, his eyes flashing a bright pink as he pulled you closer as if to shield you. Dark stopped and the Colonel’s eyes returned to their normal brown. If you had to guess from his ragged breaths and the way he leaned that much harder on you, that little display had used up whatever energy he had left. “Don’t you dare come any closer!”

“It’s okay, I’m here to help you,” Dark said softly as if speaking to a spooked animal. His eyes flickered toward your face and he paused as if realizing that you weren’t afraid, at least not of Wilford. “Y/N?”

“What happened?” you asked. “What did you do to Google?”

“Me?” Dark put a hand to his chest as if offended by the suggestion. “I didn’t do anything, _they_ attacked _me_! I don’t know what they’re thinking, it’s like they’re on some kind of power trip and it was all I could do to find you and get out of there. I can’t even tell you what they’re doing to Mark now.”

“Mark?” you asked. “What are you talking about?”

“The Host lied, said he would help us find Wilford, but then they ambushed us,” Dark said, allowing his shoulders to slump, his aura to fade as if wounded or tired. “They knew about the poker game, about Damien and Celine and they used it against us.”

He saw the guilt in your eyes and knew his suspicion had been correct. Before he could use that against you, a speech slide flashed in front of everyone’s eyes.

_“Liar!”_ Jameson grabbed Dark’s arm and spun him around to wave a finger in his face. _“No ego would hurt their creator, you know that.”_

Dark narrowed his eyes and Jameson swiftly took a step back, but you added, “Jameson’s right, that doesn’t sound like them.”

“You would believe him? He’s just another one of them, a knockoff of the real thing,” Dark said. He met Jameson’s eyes as he added, “A cheap imitation.”

Jameson made a gesture that you didn’t recognize but could probably guess the meaning of.

“The point is, we can’t stay here,” Dark said, ignoring him. “It’s only a matter of time before the others follow, and I need to keep you two safe.”

“No,” you said as he approached, already knowing what he planned to do. “Dark, we’re not going anywhere. Even if you are right, if Mark is hurt then—”

“Then it is his own fault,” Dark said, his aura gathering as he reached out his hand. “Just don’t struggle, and this will be that much easier for you.”

“Keep your hands off my Partner,” Abe said, and Dark turned to see the gun he pointed at him. “If they don’t want to go with you, then maybe you should take a hint.”

Dark scoffed and disappeared into his aura to reappear behind the Detective. Abe had no time to turn before Dark had one hand on his wrist, the other around his throat, but then Jameson was there to help, getting several blows in that forced Dark to release his choke hold in order to defend himself. Beside you the Colonel moved as if he wanted to help but swayed on his feet as though about to faint. There was nothing you could do to help, not without letting go of Wilford and risking Dark taking him without a fight, nothing except…

Dark stepped back and leveled the Detective’s gun at Jameson. His split lip curled into a smile but the click of the hammer being pulled back in the silence that followed did not come from the gun in his hand. He turned and saw the Colonel’s gun pointed at his chest.

“Y/N?” he said, eyes wide, but then he saw the way your hand trembled, how you didn’t even have your finger on the trigger and he smiled as if seeing the joke. “_**Cute.**_ But we both know you would never shoot me.”

“Don’t,” you said as he tried to step closer. “Don’t come any closer and keep your hands off of my friends!”

“Y/N, please.” He obediently stopped and his aura diminished and disappeared as he raised his hands pleadingly. But he didn’t look like Mark when he ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back out of his face. Your breath caught in your throat at the same time as the Colonel’s, and then for a second you saw Dark as the Seer again, as Celine, and you realized he was showing you both exactly what he wanted you to see.

“Stop it,” you said, hating your voice for trembling.

“Isn’t this what you want?” Dark asked as he stepped closer. “To have them back again? William, please.”

“My name is Wilford Warfstache,” he said, his voice wavering just as bad as yours if not worse. “And you said it yourself: you are not Celine.”

He scowled and suddenly he was Dark again, his aura expanding to take in the whole area as he said, “Fine. We’ll do this the hard way then.”

You expected him to keep coming closer, you braced yourself for him to try to take you or Wilford, but Dark suddenly spun around and slammed Jameson’s head into the table behind him and pointed his gun at Abe’s face.

“I keep telling you,” Dark said, pushing down harder on Jameson as he did so, “Not to struggle. But you _**insist**_ on pushing me. Put down the gun, Y/N, and come with me, and I’ll let these two live. Or we can start our first lesson right here, right now.”

The gun shook in your hand and you realized that he was right. You couldn’t do it.

But Wilford put his hand over your own, steadying your aim. This close, you were the only one who heard him whisper the words, “Goodbye, Celine.”

And together, you pulled the trigger.


	19. One Last Memory

Dr. Iplier looked up when you walked into the infirmary and pulled off his headphones. Even from a distance you could hear the faint sound of music playing as he said, “Y/N! …Are you okay?”

You had lost count how many times you’d been asked that since yesterday. Abe was the first, asking even as he pulled the gun from your unresisting hands. More came soon afterward when the other egos showed up in Marvin’s signature burst of green, all ready for a fight to find the body already lying on the ground. You couldn’t understand why they kept asking _you_, when you were the only one uninjured. Wilford had finally passed out, and Abe and Jameson had taken more than a few hits from Dark with a terrible bruise already forming on Jameson’s cheek. And then there was the body.

He had reached out for you, at the last second.

Mark asked when you returned to the house with the egos, even as Dr. Schneeplestein was trying to remind him to rest. The question came again and again, and you gave the doctor the same answer you gave every time.

“I’m fine.” You saw the look Dr. Iplier gave you and added, “I just came by to check in on the Host. How’s he doing?”

You looked at the bed like you hadn’t seen him the second you walked in and walked over as the doctor said, “Resting. He’ll probably be up soon, if you want to wait here.”

The Host looked so much smaller, without his tan jacket on. It hung on the back of the chair by his bed and it looked like someone had washed it for him. Without it, you could see the bandages poking out under his shirt, as clean and white as those around his eyes. An IV led down to his arm, the bag almost empty.

Dr. Iplier glanced at the bag as well and walked over to check it as he said, “Mark shouldn’t be overdoing it so soon after donating.”

“He was talking to the Googles when I saw them,” you said. “Well, arguing. They’re trying to restore his permissions so he can get in and remove anything…anything that might have been left behind.”

Apparently when Google gave his estimate on how long it would take to recover Mark’s password, he had included time for arguing over the questions to prove his identity as well as time to mock Mark for the answers he’d given.

Dr. Iplier saw the look you sent toward the only other occupied bed in the infirmary and placed a comforting hand on your shoulder. “He’s sedated. He’s not going to wake up any time soon.”

“How long can you keep him like that?” you asked.

A shot straight to the chest and the worry was about what would happen when he woke up. But then by the time the other egos arrived yesterday, he had already stopped bleeding and was already trying to wake up by the time they got him to the infirmary. Without his aura, Dark looked strangely peaceful in his sleep, a fact that didn’t match the thick restraints around his arms, legs, and chest.

“It’s not a long-term solution, of course,” the doctor admitted. “But Marvin believes he might know a spell that could send him somewhere else, similar to the other ‘places’ Dark and Wilford go when they use their powers. The Host’s vision should be able to tell us how long that could hold him, if at all, once he’s in any condition to look.”

“Really?” You let this sink in while he fiddled with the IV bag. Could they really have a chance of getting rid of Dark?

Dr. Iplier removed the needle and put pressure on the Host’s arm until he could put the bandage on. “And how is Wilford doing?”

“Better, I think.” You had left him down in the kitchen, in the middle of all the noise and chaos that followed the egos as they acted like they’d just got a brother back. Even with the Septic egos gone, returned home for now with the promise of coming back soon, there was so much going on. You’d been worried at first, but while he wasn’t his loud, bombastic self just yet, Wilford was smiling and laughing and a night of sleep had done him good. “Chef Iplier is determined to make sure he eats, he even made chicken and dumplings.”

“Really?” Dr. Iplier checked the Host’s vitals and after some thought said, “It might not hurt to have a plate. I mean, to get a plate for the Host.”

“I can stay here, if you want to go,” you said. “I’ve already eaten.”

He glanced at you and then back at the Host, and you could almost see him thinking that maybe some time alone would be good for you as he said, “I won’t be long.”

You sat in silence except for the occasional beep from the machine monitoring the Host’s vitals. It was quiet and calm here, especially compared to the rest of the house, enough that you might have fallen asleep if you could. But every time you came close, now or last night as you sat by Wilford’s bed, you remembered the weight of the gun in your hand, the shot, the look on his face.

You glanced at Dark again and saw the nightstand next to his bed, noticing for the first time what was lying on top of it. You stood and walked over. There was no change in his breathing, no sign that he even knew you were there as you looked down at the cane, left there by Google when he helped bring him in.

You still couldn’t believe he kept it, after all this time.

The moment you picked up the cane, the memories started.

_Damien._

_Damien sitting with you under a tree at university, books laid out around you as you studied. The way he smiled proudly when you got the answer right._

_Damien talking animatedly as he walked backward, his eyes on you as he gestured with little to no care about what was coming up behind him. Knowing you were looking out for him, ready to pull him back if needed like you had so many times before._

_You remembered the moment he showed you this cane, the way he talked about the future, how sure he was that you would become District Attorney. You remembered all the plans he made, all the good he planned to do._

Memories flooded your mind as you looked again at the man lying strapped to the bed. At Damien. And for a moment, just a moment, you wished there was something you could do.

And that was all it took to let Dark in.

Your knees almost buckled under the pressure as the presence hit you all at once, weighing down on you like a vice while filling you from within. Darkness hovered around the edges of your vision and it took you a moment to realize your body moved on its own, your head tilting to look down at your hands, one still holding tight to the cane as your weight shifted, like something else was trying it on for size.

“No.” It was a silent thought as your voice failed, your lips twitching into a smile in response. “No, no, no!”

_**“Shh.”**_ It was your voice, but you could hear Dark in it as he said with your mouth,_** “Quiet now, Y/N.”**_

You tried to stop it, to fight him off, and your hand shook as you reached out and took the IV needle from Dark’s arm and let it fall to the floor. There was a single bead of blood but no more as you pulled at the restraints, unbuckling one after the other even as you strained to stop yourself, knowing that without the sedative it wouldn’t be long before Dark woke up.

As the last restraint fell away, you thought that would be it, that he would let you go, but there was a laugh in your ear that did not belong to you as Dark caught the hope.

_**“Oh, but why would I let go so soon?”**_ He whispered, a voice in your mind as his presence held you that much tighter._** “When there’s so much left for us to do together.”**_

You pushed back, your body doubling over as you fought for control, and you felt Dark’s surprise that you were still resisting him. But this wasn’t going to be like last time, you wouldn’t let it.

The door to the infirmary opened and Dr. Iplier walked in, covered tray in hand and said, “Y/N, I—”

_ **“NOT NOW!”** _

Dr. Iplier took one look at you, barely standing as Dark’s aura surrounded you, the figure like a shadow standing behind you as your eyes turned black with the effort of possession, and backed out of the room. In the silence that followed you could hear the soft, distinct click of the lock.

For a second the aura pulled back and you felt the breath in your chest as you gasped for air before it crashed down on you again.

_**“How many times do I have to tell you not to struggle?”**_ Dark whispered and you found your head turning to look at your empty hand, taking in the lines of light that ran through it, spidering like a mirror or glass cracking under pressure. _**“This body of yours can only take so much, Y/N. Do I really need to break you?”**_

He felt the hesitation that ran through you and immediately went after it, stirring up another memory.

_You always did try to fight sleep back in university. You couldn’t count how many times Damien found you leaning over a textbook or working on a paper at some ungodly hour, unable to recall the last time you slept as you insisted you weren’t tired, that you had so much you needed to do. You remembered Damien pulling you away from your books, half-carrying, half-dragging you to a couch as you argued all the way._

_You remembered the smell of the blanket he threw over your shoulders, the comforting hand that brushed your face as he waited for you to fall asleep._

Dark felt your struggling fade as the memory soothed you into a doze. He looked at your hands and shifted your weight again. Your body responded more easily now, not quite as well as he would have liked, but he doubted he could change it to suit him like he had before, not without risking shattering this body completely. You weren’t the one he was trying to break after all, at least not yet.

He hefted the cane in your hand and walked over to the bed where the Host lay and waited for the sounds of footsteps coming down the hall, for the lock turning in the door. It wouldn’t be long before the Doctor’s help arrived, and he wanted to make sure they saw exactly what happened.

You, on the other hand, didn’t need to see, but there were more than enough memories to keep you distracted.

_After all, your need to push yourself harder and harder didn’t stop with university. As a student and as a young lawyer it was like you were constantly trying to prove yourself, to reach some ideal that you had set for yourself. So many nights Damien found you at the office, so many times he dragged you away from your work for a walk or a drink that they all started to run together. Not that you didn’t do the same for him, especially in the days he was campaigning for mayor. No one knew more than you what he had to go through, how hard he worked to make it happen, how much time he put in as mayor night after night._

_Even then he looked out for you. Even on the night of the poker party, you remembered his concern, how he took you up to your room, and then the next day—_

Dark frowned and swiftly changed the memory as he felt the change in you. They were coming, he could hear Mark’s voice now.

_“Sometimes I wonder if you would even sleep at all if it weren’t for me,” Damien teased as made you lie down on the couch in his office. You were so tired he didn’t trust you to make it home on your own._

_“No, I can’t…” You tried to sit up and shook your head as he put a hand on your shoulder. “I can’t stay here.”_

_“Can’t it wait?” Damien smiled as you laid your head down and he sat on the edge of the couch next to you, his calm presence comforting in the quiet. “Just a little longer, please.”_

Dark studied the Host and hefted the cane in your hand, feeling the weight of it.

_“Do you remember?” Damien asked softly, one hand on your back as he looked at the cane in the other. “What I told you when I first received this cane?”_

_You shook your head. There was something…strange about this memory, but you felt at peace as you listened to his voice._

The Host stirred, maybe from the noise gathering outside of the room, maybe because some vision was trying to warn him, to wake him up in time.

_“It was a gift,” he said, smiling at the black wood. “Given to me after I became Mayor. I saw it as a symbol of the office, of everything that I, that _we_ would do for our city. We were going to do so many great things together, I really believed that.”_

The door burst open and Mark and Wilford ran in, stopping short when they saw you raise the cane.

_“But not this,” Damien said, closing his eyes as he raised the cane._

Dark felt something in your arm, realized that he was no longer in control of it as it brought the cane down.

The cane snapped in your hand as you struck the metal edge of the Host’s bed.

_Damien let the pieces drop to the floor and gave you one last smile. “Goodbye, Y/N.”_

Almost immediately Dark’s presence disappeared and you were in control again, staggering before Mark caught you, his heart pounding so hard you could feel it through his chest.

“Dark, he—” The breath caught in your throat.

“I know, I know,” Mark said quietly, but he didn’t, because he hadn’t seen what you had.

Dark was getting up, his aura already flaring. You could see the bandage under his shirt, how he was struggling with the pain, but you could see the look in his eyes. You knew from just that short amount of time he had in your head that he would not stop, not until he made Mark and Wilford and all of the egos suffer. Until he broke them.

But Wilford saw him, just as he had seen what he almost made you do and his eyes flared pink as he said, “Hello again, old chap.”

“Wilford.” Dark’s aura lashed out but Wilford did not even flinch as he lunged forward and grabbed him, lifting him up off of his feet. “You wouldn’t—”

“I think it’s time for a little time out,” Wilford said, the smile not quite meeting his eyes. There was a swirl of pink and yellow and Dark was gone, leaving Wilford staring down at his empty hands.

“Did you just…?” Mark started, unable to finish the question.

You imagined Dark, trapped in that little bit of madness that was Wilford’s own dimension, far removed from the void that Dark knew so well.

He met your stares and his eyes returned to their normal brown as what he just did sank in and he grinned.

_“Bully.”_

Some time later, Wilford stood at the head of the conference room table, practically bouncing on his feet as the video finished playing on the TV behind him. “So, what’d you think?”

Multiple voices tried to answer him at once and Wilford quickly said, “Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.”

“There was a lot there,” Mark said slowly from his seat at the other head of the table. “You, uh, all of you were in on this?”

“Well, I thought my ideas were portrayed quite nicely,” Dr. Iplier said.

“Yeah, but I don’t remember agreein’ to that singin’ over my commercial,” Ed Edgar said.

Beside him, Yandereplier drew out a blade from somewhere and asked, “Did you not like it?”

“No, nope, lovely singing voice you have,” Ed said, trailing off into a mutter as the blade disappeared again.

“I feel that it may have deviated from our primary objective,” Google said, all four glaring at Bing when he threw a paper ball at them from across the table.

“Sah, dude, you say that about everything!”

“The camera shifts to the Host, who continues to narrate as Jim runs around the table trying to film everyone’s reactions. Jim zooms in on Bim Trimmer, who says—”

“Well, you barely got to see my gameshow segment, we all know that’s the real moneymaker there.”

The arguing continued, with more than enough egos to keep it going. The conference room had expanded, with enough room at the table for everyone to sit, not that the Jims ever sat down and nothing seemed to convince the King of the Squirrels to move from the nest he had created in the corner where he sat with the badger that no one seemed ready to ask about. Still, more than one looked at Mark, trying to gauge his reaction as Wilford spoke over everyone.

“Look, this is an opportunity that can’t be missed. It’s for everybody!”

“And you said it was called…?” Mark asked.

“Markiplier TV,” Wilford said.

Mark raised his eyebrows at that. It was a move designed to stroke Mark’s ego and they all knew it.

“Imagine, once a week maybe, your viewers get a taste of this,” Wilford said, gesturing at the screen. “All of us, doing what we do best while you get a day off. It’s going to sweep the nation! And you can even get in on it if you want to.”

Mark tapped his fingers, aware that every eye in the room was on him as they all waited for a response. The egos had put so much time and energy into this over the past few weeks, all while trying to keep it as a surprise for Mark. You’d seen some of the segments before, and helped with the others along with Amy, Tyler, Ethan, and Kathryn, but some of it had completely surprised you like the trailer for a superhero show featuring Silver Shepherd and Jackieboy Man, or the…unique take Chase and Bing brought to competitive gaming.

“What do you think, Y/N?”

Mark glanced at you, like you didn’t know he’d already made up his mind. Sure, he tried to keep a straight face through it all, but this Mark was apparently as good at Try Not to Laugh Challenges as the regular Mark. The Punk Dog bit absolutely broke him.

“Well, I think you should listen to old Warfy,” you said, trying hard not to laugh at the grin spreading across Wilford’s face, “Because I know your fans are going to love it.”


End file.
